Uniform Justice

Uniform Justice

by

Donna Leon

Donna Leon has lived in Venice for many years and previously lived in

Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China, where she worked as a

teacher. Her previous novels featuring Commissario Brunetti have all

been highly acclaimed, most recently Friends in High Places, which won

the CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction, A Sea of Troubles and

Wilful Behaviour.

Uniform Justice

Also by Donna Leon

Death at La Fenice

Death in a Strange Country

The Anonymous Venetian

A Venetian Reckoning

Acqua Alta

The Death of Faith

A Noble Radiance

Fatal Remedies

Friends in High Places

A Sea of Troubles

Wilful Behaviour

Kent for Hedi and Agusti Janes

In uomini, in sol dati spe rare fe delta

You expect fidelity in men, in soldiers?

Cost fan tutte --Mozart

Thirst woke him. It was not the healthy thirst that follows three sets

of tennis or a day spent skiing, thirst that comes slowly: it was the

grinding, relentless thirst that comes of the body's desperate attempt

to replenish liquids that have been displaced by alcohol. He lay in

his bed, suddenly awake, covered with a thin film of sweat, his

underwear damp and clinging.

At first he thought he could outwit it, ignore it and fall back into

the sodden sleep from which his thirst had prodded him. He turned on

his side, mouth open on the pillow, and pulled the covers up over his

shoulder. But much as his body craved more rest, he could not force it

to ignore his thirst nor the faint nervousness of his stomach. He lay

there, inert and utterly deprived of will, and told himself to go back

to sleep.

For some minutes he succeeded, but then a church bell somewhere towards

the city poked him back to consciousness. The idea of liquid seeped

into his mind: a glass of sparkling mineral water, its sides running

with condensation; the drinking fountain in the corridor of his

elementary school; a paper cup filled with Coca-Cola. He needed liquid

more than anything life had ever presented to him as desirable or

good.

Again, he tried to force himself to sleep, but he knew he had lost and

now had no choice but to get out of bed. He started to think about

which side of bed to get out of and whether the floor of the corridor

would be cold, but then he pushed all of these considerations aside as

violently as he did his blankets and got to his feet. His head

throbbed and his stomach registered resentment of its new position

relative to the floor, but his thirst ignored them both.

He opened the door to his room and started down the corridor, its

length illuminated by the light that filtered in from outside. As he

had feared, the linoleum tiles were harsh on his naked feet, but the

thought of the water that lay ahead gave him the will to ignore the

cold.

He entered the bathroom and, driven by absolute need, headed to the

first of the white sinks that lined the wall. He turned on the cold

tap and let it run for a minute: even in his fuddled state he

remembered the rusty warm taste of the first water that emerged from

those pipes. When the water that ran over his hand was cold, he cupped

both hands and bent down towards them. Noisy as a dog, he slurped the

water and felt it moving inside him, cooling and saving him as it went.

Experience had taught him to stop after the first few mouthfuls, stop

and wait to see how his troubled stomach would respond to the surprise

of liquid without alcohol. At first, it didn't like it, but youth and

good health made up for that, and then his stomach accepted the water

quietly, even asked for more.

Happy to comply, he leaned down again and took eight or nine large

mouthfuls, each one bringing more relief to his tortured body. The

sudden flood of water triggered something in his stomach, and that in

turn triggered something in his brain, and he grew dizzy and had to

lean forward, hands propped on the front of the sink, until the world

grew quiet again.

He put his hands under the still flowing stream and drank again. At a

certain point, experience and sense told him any more would be risky,

so he stood up straight, eyes closed, and dragged his wet palms across

his face and down the front of his T-shirt. He lifted the hem and

wiped at his lips; then, refreshed and feeling as if he might again

begin to contemplate life, he turned to go back to his room.

And saw the bat, or what his muddled senses first perceived as a bat,

just there, off in the distance. It couldn't be a bat, for it was

easily two metres long and as wide as a man. But it had the shape of a

bat. It appeared to suspend itself against the wall, its head perched

above black wings that hung limp at its sides, clawed feet projecting

from beneath.

He ran his hands roughly over his face, as if to wipe away the sight,

but when he opened his eyes again the dark shape was still there. He

backed away from it and, driven by the fear of what might happen to him

if he took his eyes from the bat, he moved slowly in the direction of

the door of the bathroom, towards where he knew he would find the

switch for the long bars of neon lighting. Befuddled by a mixture of

terror and incredulity, he kept his hands behind him, one palm flat and

sliding ahead of him on the tile wall, certain that contact with the

wall was his only contact with reality.

Like a blind man, he followed his seeing hand along the wall until he

found the switch and the long double row of neon lights passed

illumination along one by one until a day like brightness filled the

room.

Fear drove him to close his eyes while the lights came flickering on,

fear of what horrid motion the bat-like shape would be driven to make

when disturbed from the safety of the near darkness. When the lights

grew silent, the young man opened his eyes and forced himself to

look.

Although the stark lighting transformed and revealed the shape, it did

not entirely remove its resemblance to a bat, nor did it minimize the

menace of those trailing wings. The wings, however, were revealed as

the engulfing folds of the dark cloak that served as the central

element of their winter uniform, and the head of the bat, now

illuminated, was the head of Ernesto Moro, a Venetian and, like the boy

now bent over the nearest sink, racked by violent vomiting, a student

at San Martino Military Academy.

It took a long time for the authorities to respond to the death of

Cadet Moro, though little of the delay had to do with the behaviour of

his classmate, Pietro Pellegrini. When the waves of sickness abated,

the boy returned to his room and, using the telefonino which seemed

almost a natural appendage, so often did he use and consult it, he

called his father, on a business trip in Milano, to explain what had

happened, or what he had just seen. His father, a lawyer, at first

said he would call the authorities, but then better sense intervened

and he told his son to do so himself and to do it instantly.

Not for a moment did it occur to Pellegrini's father that his son was

in any way involved in the death of the other boy, but he was a

criminal lawyer and familiar with the workings of the official mind. He

knew that suspicion was bound to fall upon the person who hesitated in

bringing a crime to the attention of the police, and he also knew how

eager they were to seize upon the obvious solution. So he told the boy

indeed, he could be said to have commanded him to call the authorities

instantly. The boy, trained in obedience by his father and by two

years at San Martino, assumed that the authorities were those in charge

of the school and thus went downstairs to report to his commander the

presence of a dead boy in the third floor bathroom.

The police officer at the Questura who took the call when it came from

the school asked the name of the caller, wrote it down, then asked him

how he came to know about this dead person and wrote down that answer,

as well. After hanging up, the policeman asked the colleague who was

working the switchboard with him if they should perhaps pass the report

on to the Carabinieri, for the Academy, as a military institution,

might be under the jurisdiction of the Carabinieri rather than the city

police. They debated this for a time, the second one calling down to

the officers' room to see if anyone there could solve the procedural

problem. The officer who answered their call maintained that the

Academy was a private institution with no official ties to the Army he

knew, because his dentist's son was a student there and so they were

the ones who should respond to the call. The men on the switchboard

discussed this for some time, finally agreeing with their colleague.

The one who had taken the call noticed that it was after eight and

dialled the interior number of his superior, Commissario Guido

Brunetti, sure that he would already be in his office.

Brunetti agreed that the case was theirs to investigate and then asked,

"When did the call come in?"

"Seven twenty-six, sir came Alvise's efficient, crisp reply.

A glance at his watch told Brunetti that it was now more than a

half-hour after that, but as Alvise was not the brightest star in the

firmament of his daily routine, he chose to make no comment and,

instead, said merely, "Order a boat. I'll be down."

When Alvise hung up, Brunetti took a look at the week's duty roster

and, seeing that Ispettore Lorenzo Vianello's name was not listed for

that day nor for the next, he called

Vianello at home and briefly explained what had happened. Before

Brunetti could ask him, Vianello said, Till meet you there."

Alvise had proven capable of informing the pilot of Commissario

Brunetti's request, no doubt in part because the pilot sat at the desk

opposite him, and so, when Brunetti emerged from the Questura a few

minutes later, he found both Alvise and the pilot on deck, the boat's

motor idling. Brunetti paused before stepping on to the launch and

told Alvise, "Go back upstairs and send Pucetti down."

"But don't you want me to come with you, sir?" Alvise asked, sounding

as disappointed as a bride left waiting on the steps of the church.

"No, it's not that," Brunetti said carefully, 'but if this person calls

back again, I want you to be there so that there's continuity in the

way he's dealt with. We'll learn more that way."

Though this made no sense at all, Alvise appeared to accept it;

Brunetti reflected, not for the first time, that it was perhaps the

absence of sense that made it so easy for Alvise to accept. He went

docilely back inside the Questura. A few minutes later Pucetti emerged

and stepped on to the launch. The pilot pulled them away from the Riva

and toward the Bacino. The night's rain had washed the pollution from

the air, and the city was presented with a gloriously limpid morning,

though the sharpness of late autumn was in the air.

Brunetti had had no reason to go to the Academy for more than a decade,

not since the graduation of the son of a second cousin. After being

inducted into the Army as a lieutenant, a courtesy usually extended to

graduates of San Martino, most of them the sons of soldiers, the boy

had progressed through the ranks, a source of great pride to his father

and equal confusion to the rest of the family. There was no military

tradition among the Brunettis nor among his mother's family, which is

not to say that the family had never had anything to do with the

military. To their cost, they had, for it was the generation of

Brunetti's parents that had not only fought the last war but had had

large parts of it fought around them, on their own soil.

Hence it was that Brunetti, from the time he was a child, had heard the

military and all its works and pomps spoken of with the dismissive

contempt his parents and their friends usually reserved for the

government and the Church. The low esteem with which he regarded the

military had been intensified over the years of his marriage to Paola

Falier, a woman of leftish, if chaotic, politics. It was Paola's

position that the greatest glory of the Italian Army was its history of

cowardice and retreat, and its greatest failure the fact that, during

both world wars, its leaders, military and political, had flown in the

face of this truth and caused the senseless deaths of hundreds of

thousands of young men by relentlessly pursuing both their own delusory

ideas of glory and the political goals of other nations.

Little that Brunetti had observed during his own undistinguished term

of military service or in the decades since then had persuaded him that

Paola was wrong. Brunetti realized that not much he had seen could

persuade him that the military, either Italian or foreign, was much

different from the Mafia: dominated by men and unfriendly to women;

incapable of honour or even simple honesty beyond its own ranks;

dedicated to the acquisition of power; contemptuous of civil society;

violent and cowardly at the same time. No, there was little to

distinguish one organization from the other, save that some wore easily

recognized uniforms while the other leaned toward Armani and Brioni.

The popular beliefs about the history of the Academy were known to

Brunetti. Established on the Giudecca in 1852 by Alessandro Loredan,

one of Garibaldi's earliest supporters in the Veneto and, by the time

of Independence, one of his generals, the school was originally located

in a large building

on the island. Dying childless and without male heirs, Lurcdan had

left the building as well as his family palnzzo and fortune in trust,

on the condition that the income be used to support the military

Academy to which he had given the name of his father's patron saint.

Though the oligarchs of Venice might not have been wholehearted

supporters of the Risorgimento, they had nothing but enthusiasm for an

institution which so effectively assured that the Loredan fortune

remained in the city. Within hours of his death, the exact value of

his legacy was known, and within days the trustees named in the will

had selected a retired officer, who happened to be the brother-in-law

of one of them, to administer the Academy. And so it had continued to

this day: a school run on strictly military lines, where the sons of

officers and gentlemen of wealth could acquire the training and bearing

which might prepare them to become officers in their turn.

Brunetti's reflections were cut off as the boat pulled into a canal

just after the church of Sant' Eufemia and then drew up at a landing

spot. Pucetti took the mooring rope, jumped on to the land, and

slipped the rope through an iron circle in the pavement. He extended a

hand to Brunetti and steadied him as he stepped from the boat.

It's up here, isn't it?" Brunetti asked, pointing towards the back of

the island and the lagoon, just visible in the distance.

"I don't know, sir Pucetti confessed. "I have to admit I come over

here only for the Redentore. I don't think I even know where the place

is." Ordinarily, no confession of the provincialism of his fellow

Venetians could surprise Brunetti, but Pucetti seemed so very bright

and open-minded.

As if sensing his commander's disappointment, Pucetti added, "It's

always seemed like a foreign country to me, sir. Must be my mother:

she always talks about it like it's not part of Venice. If they gave

her the key to a house on the Giudecca, I'm sure she'd give it back."

Thinking it wiser not to mention that his own mother had often

expressed the same sentiment and that he agreed with it completely,

Brunetti said only, "It's back along this canal, near the end," and set

off in that direction.

Even at this distance, he could see that the large port one that led

into the courtyard of the Academy stood open: anyone could walk in or

out. He turned back to Pucetti. "Find out when the doors were opened

this morning and if there's any record of people entering or leaving

the building." Before Pucetti could speak, Brunetti added, "Yes, and

last night, too, even before we know how long he's been dead. And who

has keys to the door and when they're closed at night." Pucetti didn't

have to be told what questions to ask, a welcome relief on a force

where the ability of the average officer resembled that of Alvise.

Vianello was already standing just outside the port one He

acknowledged his superior's arrival with a slight raising of his chin

and nodded to Pucetti. Deciding to use whatever advantage was to be

gained by appearing unannounced and in civilian clothes, Brunetti told

Pucetti to go back down to the boat and wait ten minutes before joining

them.

Inside, it was evident that word of the death had already spread,

though Brunetti could not have explained how he knew this. It might

have been the sight of small groups of boys and young men standing in

the courtyard, talking in lowered voices, or it might have been the

fact that one of them wore white socks with his uniform shoes, sure

sign that he had dressed so quickly he didn't know what he was doing.

Then he realized that not one of them was carrying books. Military or

not, this was a school, and students carried books, unless, that is,

something of greater urgency had intervened between them and their

studies.

One of the boys near the port one broke away from the group he was

talking to and approached Brunetti and Vianello. "What can I do for

you?" he asked, though, from the

tone, he might as well have been demanding what they were doing there.

Strong-featured and darkly handsome, he was almost as tall as Vianello,

though he couldn't have been out of his teens. The others followed him

with their eyes.

Provoked by the boy's tone, Brunetti said, "I want to speak to the

person in charge."

"And who are you?" the boy demanded.

Brunetti didn't respond but gave the boy a long, steady glance. The

young man's eyes didn't waver, nor did he move back when Brunetti took

a small step towards him. He was dressed in the regulation uniform

dark blue trousers and jacket, white shirt, tie and had two gold

stripes on the cuffs of his jacket. In the face of Brunetti's silence,

the boy shifted his weight then put his hands on his hips. He stared

at Brunetti, refusing to repeat his question.

"What's he called, the man in charge here?" Brunetti asked, as if the

other had not spoken. He added, "I don't mean his name, I mean his

title."

"Comandante," the boy was surprised into saying.

"Ah, how grand," Brunetti said. He wasn't sure whether the boy's

behaviour offended his general belief that youth should display

deference to age or whether he felt particular irritation at the boy's

preening belligerence. Turning to Vianello, he said, "Inspector, get

this boy's name and moved toward the staircase that led to the

palazzo.

He climbed the five steps and pushed open the door. The foyer had a

floor patterned with enormous diamonds made from boards of different

woods. Booted feet had worn a path to a door in the far wall. Brunetti

crossed the room, which was unexpectedly empty, and opened the door. A

hallway led toward the back of the building, its walls covered with

what he assumed to be regimental flags. Some of them bore the lion of

San Marco; others carried different animals, all equally aggressive:

teeth bared, claws unsheathed, hackles raised.

The first door on the right had only a number above it, as

did the second and third. As he walked by the last of them, a young

boy, certainly not more than fifteen, came out into the hall. He was

surprised to see Brunetti, who nodded calmly and asked, "Where's the

office of the Comandante?"

His tone or his manner sparked a Pavlovian response in the boy, who

jumped to attention and snapped out a salute. "Up one flight, sir.

Third door on the left."

Brunetti resisted the temptation to say, "At ease." With a neutral,

Thank you', he went back toward the staircase.

At the top, he followed the boy's instructions and stopped at the third

door on the left. com andante giulio be mbo read a sign next to the

door.

Brunetti knocked, paused and waited for an answer, and knocked again.

He thought he'd take advantage of the absence of the Comandante to have

a look at his office, and so he turned the handle and entered. It is

difficult to say who was more startled, Brunetti or the man who stood

in front of one of the windows, a sheaf of papers in his hand.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," Brunetti said. "One of the students told me

to come up and wait for you in your office. I had no idea you were

here." He turned towards the door and then back again, as if confused

as to whether he should remain or leave.

The man in front of the window was facing Brunetti, and the light that

shone in from behind him made it almost impossible for Brunetti to

distinguish anything about him. He could see, however, that he wore a

uniform different from that of the boys, lighter and with no stripe

down the side of the trousers. The rows of medals on his chest were

more than a hand span wide.

The man set the papers on his desk, making no attempt to approach

Brunetti. "And you are?" he asked, managing to sound bored with the

question.

"Commissario Guide Brunetti, sir," he said. "I've been sent to

investigate the report of a death here." This was not strictly true,

for Brunetti had sent himself to investigate, but he saw

no reason why the Comandante should be told this. He stepped forward

and extended his hand quite naturally, as though he were too dull to

have registered the coolness emanating from the other man.

After a pause long enough to indicate who was in charge, Bembo stepped

forward and extended his hand. His grip was firm and gave every

indication that the Comandante was restraining himself from exerting

his full force out of consideration for what it would do to Brunetti's

hand.

"Ah, yes," Bembo said, 'a commissa rio He allowed a pause to extend

the statement and then went on, "I'm surprised my friend Vice-Questore

Patta didn't think to call me to tell me you were coming."

Brunetti wondered if the reference to his superior, who was unlikely to

appear in his office for at least another hour, was meant to make him

rug humbly at his forelock while telling Bembo he would do everything

in his power to see that he was not disturbed by the investigation.

"I'm sure he will as soon as I give him my preliminary report,

Comandante/ Brunetti said.

"Of course," Bembo said and moved around his desk to take his chair. He

waved what was no doubt a gracious hand to Brunetti, who seated

himself. Brunetti wanted to see how eager Bembo was to have the

investigation begin. From the way the Comandante moved small objects

around on the top of his desk, pulled together a stack of papers and

tapped them into line, it seemed that he felt no unseemly haste.

Brunetti remained silent.

"It's all very unfortunate, this Bembo finally said.

Brunetti thought it best to nod.

"It's the first time we've had a suicide at the Academy/ Bembo went

on.

"Yes, it must be shocking. How old was the boy?" Brunetti asked. He

pulled a notebook from the pocket of his jacket and bent the covers

back when he found an empty page. He

patted his pockets then, with an embarrassed smile, leaned forward and

reached for a pencil that lay on the Comandante's desk. "If I may, sir

he said.

Bembo didn't bother to acknowledge the request. "Seventeen, I

believe," he said.

"And his name, sir?" Brunetti asked.

"Ernesto Moro/ Bembo replied.

Brunetti's start of surprise at the mention of one of the city's most

famous names was entirely involuntary.

"Yes/ Bembo said, "Fernando's son."

Before his retirement from political life, Dottor Fernando Moro had for

some years served as a Member of Parliament, one of the few men

universally acknowledged to have filled that position honestly and

honourably. The wags of Venice insisted that Moro had been moved from

various committees because his honesty proved inconvenient to his

colleagues: the instant it became evident that he was immune to the

temptations of money and power, his incredulous fellow parliamentarians

found reason to reassign him. His career was often cited as evidence

of the survival of hope in the face of experience, for each chairman

who found Moro appointed to his committee was certain that, this time,

he could be induced to back those policies most certain to line the

pockets of the few at the expense of the many.

But none of them, in three years, had apparently succeeded in

corrupting Moro. Then, only two years ago, he had suddenly, and

without explanation, renounced his parliamentary seat and returned full

time to private medical practice.

"Has he been informed?" Brunetti asked.

"Who?" Bembo asked, clearly puzzled by Brunetti's question.

"His father."

Bembo shook his head. "I don't know. Isn't that the job of the

police?"

Brunetti, exercising great restraint, glanced at his watch

and asked, "How long ago was the body discovered?" Though he strove

for neutrality, he failed to keep reproach out of his voice.

Bembo bristled. This morning some time."

"What time?"

"I don't know. Shortly before the police were called."

"How shortly before?"

"I have no idea. I was called at home."

"At what time?" Brunetti asked, pencil poised over the page.

Bembo's lips tightened in badly disguised irritation. "I'm not sure.

About seven, I'd say."

"Were you already awake?"

"Of course."

"And was it you who called the police?"

"No, that had already been done by someone here."

Brunetti uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. "Comandante, the call

is registered as having come at seven twenty-six. That's about half an

hour after you were called and told the boy was dead." He paused to

allow the man time to explain, but when Bembo made no attempt to do so,

Brunetti continued, "Could you suggest an explanation for that?"

"For what?"

"For the delay of a half an hour in informing the authorities of a

suspicious death at the institution you direct."

"Suspicious?" Bembo demanded.

"Until the medical examiner has determined the cause of death, any

death is suspicious."

"The boy committed suicide. Anyone can see that."

"Have you seen him?"

The Comandante did not answer immediately. He sat back in his chair

and considered the man in front of him. Finally he answered, "Yes. I

have. I came here when they called me and went to see him. He'd

hanged himself."

"And the delay?" Brunetti asked.

Bembo waved the question away. "I have no idea. They must have

thought I would call the police, and I was sure they had."

Letting this pass, Brunetti asked, "Do you have any idea who called?"

"I just told you I don't know," Bembo said. "Surely they must have

given their name."

"Surely/ Brunetti repeated and returned to the subject. "But no one

has contacted Dottor Moro?"

Bembo shook his head.

Brunetti got to his feet. "I'll go and see that someone does."

Bembo didn't bother to stand. Brunetti paused for a moment, curious to

see if the Comandante would enforce his sense of the loftiness of his

position by glancing down at something on his desk while he waited for

Brunetti to leave. Not so. Bembo sat, empty hands resting on the top

of his desk, eyes on Brunetti, waiting.

Brunetti slipped his notebook into the pocket of his jacket, placed the

pencil carefully on the desk in front of Bembo, and left the

Comandante's office.

Outside Bembo's office, Brunetti moved a few metres away from the door

and pulled out his telefonino. He punched in 12 and was asking for

Moro's number when his attention was caught by loud male voices coming

up the stairway.

"Where's my son?" a loud voice demanded. A softer voice replied, but

the other voice insisted, "Where is he?" Saying nothing, Brunetti

broke the connection and slipped the phone back into his pocket.

As he approached the stairs, the voices grew even louder. I want to

know where he is," the original voice shouted, refusing to be placated

by whatever it was that was said to him.

When Brunetti started down the flight of stairs, he saw at the bottom a

man of about his own age and size and recognized him instantly, having

both seen his photo in the papers and been presented to him at official

functions. Moro's face was blade-thin, his cheekbones high and tilted

at a Slavic angle. His eyes and complexion were dark and in sharp

contrast to his hair, which was white and thick. He i?

stood face to face with a younger man dressed in the same dark blue

uniform worn by the boys in the courtyard.

"Dottor Moro/ Brunetti said, continuing down the steps in their

direction.

The doctor turned and looked up at Brunetti but gave no sign of

recognition. His mouth was open and he appeared to breathe only with

difficulty. Brunetti recognized the effect of shock and mounting anger

at the opposition the young man was giving him.

"I'm Brunetti, sir. Police/ he said. When Moro made no response,

Brunetti turned to the other man and said, "Where's the boy?"

At this reinforcement of the demand, the young man gave in. "In the

bathroom. Upstairs/ he said, but grudgingly, as if neither man had the

right to ask anything of him.

"Where?" Brunetti asked.

Vianello called from the staircase above them, waving back towards

where he had come from, "He's up here, sir."

Brunetti glanced at Moro, whose attention was now directed at Vianello.

He stood rooted to the spot, his mouth still roundly open and his

breathing still audible to Brunetti.

He stepped forward and took the. doctor's arm in his. Saying nothing,

Brunetti led him up the stairs after the retreating back of the slowly

moving Vianello. At the third floor, Vianello paused to check that

they were following, then moved down a corridor lined with many doors.

At the end he turned right and continued down an identical one.

Vianello opened a door with a round glass porthole. He caught

Brunetti's glance and gave a small nod, at the sight of which Moro's

arm tightened under Brunetti's hand, though his steps did not falter.

The doctor passed in front of Vianello as though the Inspector were

invisible. From the doorway, Brunetti saw only his back as he walked

toward the far end of the bathroom, where something lay on the floor.

The cut him down, sir," Vianello said, putting a hand on his superior's

arm. "I know we're not supposed to touch anything, but I couldn't

stand the idea that anyone who came to identify him would see him like

that."

Brunetti clasped Vianello's arm and had time to say only "Good', when a

low animal noise came from the back of the room. Moro half lay, half

knelt beside the body, cradling it in his arms. The noise came from

him, beyond speech and beyond meaning. As they watched, Moro pulled

the dead boy closer to him, gently moving the lolling head until it

rested in the hollow between his own neck and shoulder. The noise

turned to words, but neither Vianello nor Brunetti could understand

what the man said.

They approached him together. Brunetti saw a man not far from himself

in age and appearance, cradling in his arms the body of his only son, a

boy about the same age as Brunetti's own. Terror closed his eyes, and

when he opened them he saw Vianello, kneeling behind the doctor, his

arm across his shoulders, close to but not touching the dead boy. "Let

him be, Dottore," Vianello said softly, increasing his pressure on the

doctor's back. "Let him be," he repeated and moved slowly to support

the boy's weight from the other side. Moro seemed not to understand,

but then the combination of command and sympathy in Vianello's voice

penetrated his numbness, and, aided by Vianello, he lowered the upper

half of his son's body to the floor and knelt beside him, staring down

at his distended face.

Vianello leaned over the body, lifted the edge of the military cape,

and pulled it over the face. It wasn't until then that Brunetti bent

down and put a supporting hand under Moro's arm and helped him rise

unsteadily to his feet.

Vianello moved to the other side of the man, and together they left the

bathroom and headed down the long corridor and then down the stairs and

out into the courtyard. When they emerged, groups of uniformed boys

still stood about. All

of them glanced in the direction of the three men who emerged from the

building and then as quickly glanced away.

Moro dragged his feet like a man in chains, capable of only the

shortest steps. Once he stopped, shook his head as if in answer to a

question neither of the others could hear, and then allowed himself to

be led forward again.

Seeing Pucetti emerge from a corridor on the other side of the

courtyard, Brunetti raised his free hand and signalled him over. When

the uniformed officer reached them, Brunetti stepped aside and Pucetti

slipped his arm under Moro's, who seemed not to register the change.

Take him back to the launch Brunetti said to both of them, and then to

Vianello, "Go home with him."

Pucetti gave Brunetti an inquiring glance.

"Help Vianello take the doctor to the boat and then come back here

Brunetti said, deciding that Pucetti's intelligence and native

curiosity, to make no mention of his nearness in age to the cadets,

would help in questioning them. The two officers set off, Moro moving

jerkily, as though unaware of their presence.

Brunetti watched them leave the courtyard. The boys shot occasional

glances in his direction, but they had only to catch his eye to look

away instantly or to adjust their gaze as though they were busy

studying the far wall and really didn't notice him standing there.

When Pucetti came back a few minutes later, Brunetti told him to find

out if anything unusual had happened the night before and to get a

sense of what sort of boy young Moro had been as well as of how he was

regarded by his classmates. Brunetti knew that these questions had to

be asked now, before their memories of the previous night's events

began to influence one another and before the boy's death had time to

register and thus transform everything the cadets had to say about him

into the sort of saccharine nonsense that

accompanies the retelling of the stories of the saints and martyrs.

Hearing the two-tone wail of an approaching siren, Brunetti went out on

to the Riva to wait for the scene of crime team. The white police

launch drew up to the side of the canal; four uniformed officers

stepped off then reached back on board for the boxes and bags filled

with their equipment.

Two more men then stepped off. Brunetti waved to them, and they picked

up their equipment and started in his direction. When they reached

him, Brunetti asked Santini, the chief technician, "Who's coming?"

All of the men on the scene of crime team shared Brunetti's preference

for Dottor Rizzardi, so it was with a special tone of voice that

Santini answered, "Venturi', consciously omitting the man's title.

"Ah/ answered Brunetti before he turned and led the men into the

courtyard of the Academy. Just inside, he told them the body was

upstairs, then led them to the third floor and along the corridor to

the open door of the bathroom.

Brunetti chose not to go back inside with them, though not out of a

professional concern with the purity of the scene of the death. Leaving

them to it, he returned to the courtyard.

There was no sign of Pucetti, and all of the cadets had disappeared.

Either they had been summoned to classes or had retreated to their

rooms: in either case, they had removed themselves from the vicinity of

the police.

He went back up to Bembo's office and knocked at the door. Hearing no

response, he knocked again, then tried the handle. The door was

locked. He knocked again but no one answered.

Brunetti walked back to the central staircase, stopping to open each of

the doors in the corridor. Behind them stood classrooms: one with

charts and maps on the walls, another with algebraic formulae covering

two blackboards, and a third with an enormous blackboard covered by a

complicated

diagram filled with arrows and bars, the sort of design usually found

in history books to illustrate troop movements during battles.

In ordinary circumstances, Brunetti would have paused to study this,

as, over the decades, he had read accounts of scores, perhaps hundreds,

of battles, but today the diagram and its meaning held no interest for

him, and he closed the door. He climbed to the third floor where,

decades ago, the servants would have lived, and there he found what he

wanted: the dormitories. At least that was what he thought they had to

be: doors set not too close to one another, a printed card bearing two

family names slipped into a neat plastic holder to the left of each.

He knocked at the first. No response. The same with the second. At

the third, he thought he heard a faint noise from inside and so,

without bothering to read the names on the card, he pushed the door

open. A young man sat at a desk in front of the single window, his

back to Brunetti, moving about in his chair as though trying to escape

from it or perhaps in the grip of some sort of seizure. Brunetti

stepped into the room, reluctant to approach and startle the boy into

some worse reaction but alarmed by his violent motions.

Suddenly, the boy bent his head towards the desk, thrust out his arm,

and slapped his palm on the surface three times, singing out, "Yaah,

yaah, yaah," drawing out the final noise until, as Brunetti could hear

even across the room, the drummer played a final extended riff, which

the boy accompanied, beating out the rhythm with his fingers on the

edge of his desk.

Into the pause between tracks, Brunetti barked, his voice intentionally

loud, "Cadet."

The word cut through the low hiss of the headphones and the boy jumped

to his feet. He turned towards the voice, his right hand leaping

toward his forehead in salute, but he caught it in the wire of the

headphones and the Discman

crashed to the floor, dragging the headphones after it.

The impact seemed not to have dislodged the disc, for Brunetti could

still hear the bass, loud even halfway across the room. "Hasn't anyone

ever told you how much that will damage your hearing?" Brunetti asked

conversationally. Usually, when he put this same question to his own

children, he pitched his voice barely above a whisper, the first few

times successfully tricking them into asking him to repeat himself.

Wise to him now, they ignored him.

The boy slowly lowered his hand from his forehead, looking very

confused. "What did you say?" he asked, then added, by force of

habit, 'sir." He was tall and very thin, with a narrow jaw, one side

of which looked as if it had been shaved with a dull razor, the other

covered with signs of persistent acne. His eyes were almond shaped, as

beautiful as a girl's.

Brunetti took the two steps that brought him to the other side of the

room, and noticed that the boy's body tightened in response. But all

Brunetti did was bend down to pick up the Discman and headphones. He

set them carefully on the boy's desk, marvelling as he did at the

spartan simplicity of the room: it looked like the room of a robot, not

a young man, indeed, of two young men, if he was to believe the

evidence provided by bunk beds.

The said loud music can damage your hearing. It's what I tell my

children, but they don't listen to me."

This confused the boy even more, as if it had been a long time since an

adult had said anything to him that was both normal and understandable.

"Yes, my aunt tells me that, too."

"But you don't listen?" Brunetti asked. "Or is it that you don't

believe her?" He was honestly curious.

"Oh, I believe her all right the boy said, loosening up sufficiently to

reach down and press the off button.

"But?" Brunetti insisted.

Tt doesn't matter," the boy said with a shrug.

"No, tell me Brunetti said. I'd really like to know."

"It doesn't matter what happens to my hearing the boy explained.

"Doesn't matter?" Brunetti asked, utterly at a loss to grasp his

meaning. That you go deaf?"

"No, not that he answered, paying real attention to Brunetti and

apparently now interested in making him understand. "It takes a lot of

years for something like that to happen. That's why it doesn't matter.

Like all that Global Warming stuff. Nothing matters if it takes a long

time."

It was obvious to Brunetti that the boy was in earnest. He said, "But

you're in school, studying for a future career I presume in the

military. That's not going to happen for a number of years, either;

doesn't that matter?"

The boy answered after a few moments' reflection. That's different."

"Different how?" asked a relentless Brunetti.

The boy had relaxed now with the ease of their conversation and the

seriousness with which Brunetti treated his answers. He leaned back

against the top of his desk, picked up a packet of cigarettes and held

it out to Brunetti. At his refusal the boy took one and patted around

on the top of his desk until he found a plastic lighter hidden under a

notebook.

He lit the cigarette and tossed the lighter back on to the desk. He

took a long drag at the cigarette. Brunetti was struck by how very

hard he tried to appear older and more sophisticated than he was; then

the boy looked at Brunetti and said, "Because I can choose about the

music but I can't about the school."

Sure that this made some sort of profound difference to the boy but

unwilling to spend more time pursuing it, Brunetti asked, "What's your

name?" using the familiar to, as he would with one of his children's

friends.

"Giuliano Ruffo/ the boy answered.

Brunetti introduced himself, using his name and not his title, and

stepped forward to offer his hand. Ruffo slid from the desk and took

Brunetti's hand.

"Did you know him, the boy who died?"

Ruffo's face froze, all ease fled his body, and he shook his head in

automatic denial. As Brunetti was wondering how it was that he didn't

know a fellow student in a school this small, the boy said, That is, I

didn't know him well. We just had one class together." Ease had

disappeared from his voice, as well: he spoke quickly, as if eager to

move away from the meaning of his words.

"What one?"

"Physics."

"What other subjects do you take?" Brunetti asked. "What is it for

you, the second year?"

"Yes, sir. So we have to take Latin and Greek and Mathematics,

English, History, and then we get to choose two optional subjects."

"So Physics is one of yours?"

"Yes, sir."

"And the other?"

The answer was a long time in coming. Brunetti thought the boy must be

trying to work out what this man's hidden motive was in asking all of

these questions. If Brunetti had a motive, it was hidden even from

himself: all he could do at this point was try to get a sense of things

at the school, to catch the mood of the place; all of the information

he gained had more or less the same amorphous value and its meaning

would not become clear until later, when each piece could be seen as

part of some larger pattern.

The boy stabbed out his cigarette, eyed the packet, but did not light

another. Brunetti repeated, "What is it, the second one?"

Reluctantly, as if confessing to something he perhaps construed as

weakness, the boy finally answered, "Music."

"Good for you came Brunetti's instant response.

"Why do you say that, sir?" the boy asked, his eagerness patent. Or

perhaps it was merely relief at this removal to a neutral subject.

Brunetti's response had been visceral, so he had to consider what to

say. "I read a lot of history," he began, 'and a lot of history is

military history." The boy nodded, prodding him along with his

curiosity. "And historians often say that soldiers know only one

thing." The boy nodded again. "And no matter how well they might know

that one thing, war, it's not enough. They've got to know about other

things." He smiled at the boy, who smiled in return. "It's the great

weakness, knowing only that one thing."

The wish you'd tell my grandfather that, sir," he said.

"He doesn't believe it?"

"Oh, no, he doesn't even want to hear the word "music", at least not

from me."

"What would he rather hear that you'd been in a duel?" Brunetti asked,

not at all uncomfortable at undermining the concept of grand parental

authority.

"Oh, he'd love that, especially if it were with sabres."

"And you went home with a scar "across your cheek?" Brunetti

suggested.

They laughed at the absurdity, and it was like this, easy and

comfortably united in gentle mockery of military tradition, that

Comandante Bembo found them.

"Ruffo!" a voice barked from behind Brunetti.

The boy's smile vanished and he straightened up to stand as stiff as

one of the pilings in the laguna, his heels clacking together at the

same instant as his stiff fingers snapped to his forehead in salute.

"What are you doing here?" Bembo demanded.

"I don't have a class this hour, Comandante/ Ruffo answered, staring

straight ahead.

"And what were you doing?"

"I was talking to this gentleman, sir he said, eyes still on the far

wall.

"Who gave you permission to talk to him?"

Ruffo's face was a mask. He made no attempt to answer the question.

"Well?" demanded Bembo in an even tighter voice.

Brunetti turned to face the Comandante and acknowledged his arrival

with a gentle nod. Keeping his voice mild, he asked, "Does he need

permission to speak to the police, sir?"

"He's a minor Bembo said.

"I'm not sure I follow you, sir' Brunetti said, careful to smile to

show his confusion. He could have understood if Bembo had said

something about military rank or the need to respond only to orders

from a direct superior, but to cite the boy's youth as a reason why he

should not talk to the police displayed what seemed to Brunetti an

inordinate attention to legal detail. "I'm not sure I see how Cadet

Ruffo's age is important."

"It means his parents should be with him when you talk to him."

"Why is that, sir?" Brunetti asked, curious to hear Bembo's reason.

It took a moment for Bembo to find it. Finally he said, To see that he

understands the questions you ask."

His doubts as to the boy's ability to understand simple questions

hardly spoke well of the quality of instruction on offer at the school.

Brunetti turned back to the cadet, who stood rigid, arms rod-like at

his side, his chin a stranger to his collar. "You understood what I

asked you, didn't you, Cadet?"

"I don't know, sir the boy answered, keeping his eyes on the wall.

"We were talking about his classes, sir Brunetti said, 'and Cadet Ruffo

was telling me how much he enjoyed Physics."

"Is this true, Ruffo?" the Comandante demanded, not the least

concerned that he was openly doubting Brunetti's veracity.

"Yes, sir the boy answered. "I was telling the gentleman that I had

two elective subjects and how much I liked them."

"Don't you like the required subjects?" Bembo demanded. Then, to

Brunetti: "Was he complaining about them?"

"No/ Brunetti answered calmly. "We didn't discuss them." He wondered,

as he spoke, why Bembo should be so concerned at the mere possibility

that a student had said

something negative about his classes. What else would a student be

expected to say about his classes?

Abruptly Bembo said, "You can go, Ruffo." The boy saluted and,

ignoring Brunetti's presence, walked out of the room, leaving the door

open after him.

Till thank you to let me know before you question any of my cadets

again Bembo said in an unfriendly voice.

Brunetti hardly thought it worth contesting the point, so agreed that

he would. The Comandante turned towards the door, hesitated for a

moment as though he wanted to turn back and say something to Brunetti,

but then thought better of it and left.

Brunetti found himself alone in Ruffo's room, feeling in some way

invited there as a guest and thus bound by the rules of hospitality,

one of which was never to betray the host's trust by invading the

privacy of his home. The first thing Brunetti did was to open the

front drawer of the desk and remove the papers he found there. Most of

them were notes, what appeared to be rough drafts for essays the boy

was writing; some were letters.

"Dear Giuliano," Brunetti read, entirely without shame or scruple.

"Your aunt came to see me last week and told me you were doing well in

school." The calligraphy had the neat roundness of the generation

previous to his own, though the lines wandered up and down, following

an invisible path known only to the writer. It was signed "Nonna'.

Brunetti glanced through the other papers, found nothing of interest,

and put them all back into the drawer.

He opened the doors of the closet next to Ruffo's desk and checked the

pockets of the jackets hanging there; he found nothing but small change

and cancelled vaporetto tickets. There was a laptop computer on the

desk, but he didn't even waste his time turning it on, knowing he would

have no idea what to do with it. Under the bed, pushed back against

the wall, he saw what looked like a violin case. The books were

what he would have expected: textbooks, a driver's manual, a history of

AC Milan and other books about soccer. The bottom shelf held musical

scores: Mozart's violin sonatas and the first violin part of one of the

Beethoven string quartets. Brunetti shook his head in bemusement at

the contrast between the music in the Discman and the music on the

shelf. He opened the door to the closet that must belong to Ruffo's

roommate and cast his eye across the surface of the second desk, but he

saw nothing of interest.

Struck again by the neatness of the room, the almost surgical precision

with which the bed was made, Brunetti toyed for a moment with the idea

of drugging his son Raffi and having him brought down here to be

enrolled. But then he remembered what it was that had brought him to

this room, and levity slipped away on silent feet.

The other rooms were empty or, at least, no one responded to his

knocking, so he went back towards the bathroom where the boy had been

found. The scene of crime team was at work, and the body still lay

there, now entirely covered with the dark woollen cloak.

"Who cut him down?" Santini asked when he saw Brunetti.

"Vianello."

"He shouldn't have done that," another of the technicians called from

across the room.

That's exactly what he told me," Brunetti answered.

Santini shrugged. The would have done it, too." There were

affirmative grunts from two of the men.

Brunetti was about to ask what the crew thought had happened, when he

heard footsteps. He glanced aside and saw Dottor Venturi, one of

Rizzardi's assistants. Both men nodded, as much acknowledgement of the

other's presence as either was willing to give.

Insensitive to most human feelings that were not directed towards him,

Venturi stepped up close to the body and set his medical bag by the

head. He went down on one knee and

drew the edge of the cloak from the boy's face.

Brunetti looked away, back into the showers, where Pedone, Santini's

assistant, was holding a plastic spray bottle up towards the top of the

right-hand wall. As Brunetti watched, he squirted cloud after tiny

cloud of dark grey powder on to the walls, moving carefully from left

to right and then back to his starting point to repeat the process

about twenty centimetres below.

By the time all the walls were coated, Venturi was back on his feet.

Brunetti saw that he had left the boy's face uncovered.

"Who cut him down?" was the first thing the doctor asked.

"One of my men. I told him to," Brunetti answered and bent down to

draw the edge of the cape back across the boy's face. He rose up again

and looked at Venturi, saying nothing.

"Why did you do that?"

Appalled at the question, Brunetti ignored it, irritated that he had to

speak to a man capable of asking it. He asked, "Does it look like

suicide?"

Venturi's long pause made it obvious that he wanted to exchange

discourtesies with Brunetti, but when Santini turned to him and said,

"Well?" the doctor answered, "I won't have any idea until I can take a

look at his insides." Then, directly to Santini, "Was there a chair,

something he could stand on?"

One of the other technicians called over, "A chair. It was in the

shower."

"You didn't move it, did you?" Venturi demanded of him.

"I photographed it," the man answered, speaking with glacial clearness.

"Eight times, I think. And then Pedone dusted it for prints. And then

I moved it so it wouldn't get in his way when he dusted the shower

stall." Pointing with his chin to a wooden chair that stood in front

of one of the sinks, he added, That's it, over there."

The doctor ignored the chair. Till have my report sent to

3i you when I'm finished he said to Brunetti, then picked up his bag

and left.

When Venturi's footsteps had died away, Brunetti asked Santini, "What

does it look like to you?"

"He could have done it himself the technician answered. He pointed to

some marks that stood out from the darker grey of the coating on the

walls of the shower. There are two long swipes across the wall here,

at about shoulder height. He could have done that."

"Would that have happened?"

"Probably. It's instinct: no matter how much they want to die, the

body doesn't."

Pedone, who had been openly listening to this, added, "It's clean, sir.

No one had a fight in there, if that's what you're wondering about."

When it seemed that his partner wasn't going to add anything, Santini

continued: "It's what they do, sir, when they hang themselves. Believe

me. If there's a wall near them, they try to grab it; can't help

themselves."

"It's the way boys do it, isn't it, hanging?" Brunetti asked, not

looking down at Moro.

"More than girls, yes Santini agreed. His voice took on an edge of

anger and he asked, "What was he seventeen? eighteen? How could he do

something like that?"

"God knows Brunetti said.

"God didn't have anything to do with this, Santini said angrily, though

it was unclear whether his remark called into question the deity's

charity or his very existence. Santini went out into the hall, where

two white-coated attendants from the hospital waited, a rolled-up

stretcher leaning against the wall between them. "You can take him now

he said. He remained outside while they went in, put the boy on the

stretcher, and carried him from the room. When they were abreast of

Santini, he put up a monitory hand. They stopped, and he leaned down

to pick up the end of the dark blue military

cloak that was dragging on the ground behind the stretcher. He tucked

it under the boy's leg and told the attendants to take him out to the

boat.

Recognizing it as the temptation of moral cowardice, Brunetti pushed

aside the desire to join the others on the police boat to the hospital

and from there to the Questura. Perhaps it was the flash of terror

when he first saw the boy's body, or perhaps it was Brunetti's

admiration for the elder Moro's inconvenient honesty, but something

there was that urged Brunetti to get a more complete picture of the

boy's death. The suicides of young boys were ever more frequent:

Brunetti had read somewhere that, with almost mathematical regularity,

they increased in times of economic well-being and decreased when times

were bad. During wars, they virtually disappeared. He assumed his own

son was as subject to the vagaries of adolescence as any other boy:

carried up and down on the waves of his hormones, his popularity, or

his success at school. The idea of Raffi's ever being driven to

suicide was inconceivable, but that must be what every parent

thought.

Until evidence suggested that the boy's death had not been suicide,

Brunetti had no mandate to question anyone about

any other possibility: not his classmates, still less his parents. To

do so would be the worst sort of ghoulish curiosity as well as a

flagrant misuse of his power. Admitting all of this, he went out into

the courtyard of the Academy and, using the telefonino he had

remembered to bring with him, called Signorina Elettra's direct line at

the Questura.

When she answered, he told her where he was and asked that she check

the phone book for Moro's address, which he thought must be in

Dorsoduro, though he couldn't remember why he associated the man with

that sestiere.

She asked no questions, told him to wait a moment, then said the number

was unlisted. There elapsed another minute or two, then she gave him

the Dorsoduro address. She told him to wait, then told him the house

was on the canal running alongside the church of Madonna della Salute.

Tt's got to be the one next to the low brick one that has the terrace

with all the flowers she said.

He thanked her, then made his way back up the stairs to the dormitory

rooms on the top floor and went along the still silent corridor,

checking the names outside of the doors. He found it at the end:

moro/cavani. Not bothering to knock, Brunetti entered the room. Like

that of Ruffo, the room was clean, almost surgical: bunk beds and two

small desks opposite them, nothing left in sight to clutter up their

surfaces. He took a pen from the inside pocket of his jacket and used

it to open the drawer of the desk nearest him. With the pen he flipped

open the notebook that lay inside. Ernesto's name was on the inside of

the cover and the book was filled with mathematical formulae, written

out in a neat, square hand. He shoved the notebook to the back of the

drawer and opened the one beneath it, with much the same result, though

this one contained exercises in English.

He shoved the drawer closed and turned his attention to the closet

between the two desks. One door had Moro's name on it. Brunetti

pulled it open from the bottom with his foot.

Inside, there were two uniforms in dry cleaning bags, a denim jacket,

and a brown tweed coat. The only things he found in the pockets were

some small change and a dirty handkerchief.

A bookcase contained nothing more than textbooks. He lacked the will

to take down and examine each of them. He took one final look around

the room and left, careful to hook his pen in the handle to pull the

door shut.

He met Santini on the steps and told him to check Moro's room then left

the school and went down to the edge of the Canale della Giudecca.

Turning right, he started to walk along the Riva, intending to catch a

vaporetto. As he walked, he kept his attention on the buildings on the

other side of the canal: Nico's Bar and, above it, an apartment he had

spent a lot of time in before he met Paola; the church of the Gesuati,

where once a decent man had been pastor; the former Swiss Consulate,

the flag gone now. Have even the Swiss abandoned us? he wondered.

Ahead was the Bucintoro, the long narrow boats long gone, evicted by

the scent of Guggenheim money, Venetian oarsmen gone to make space for

even more tourist shops. He saw a boat coming from Redentore and

hurried on to the imbarcndero at Palanca to cross back to the Zattere.

When he got off, he looked at his watch and realized that it really did

take less than five minutes to make the trip from the Giudecca. Even

so, the other island still seemed, as it had ever seemed, as far

distant as the Galapagos.

It took less than five minutes to weave his way back to the broad campo

that surrounded La Madonna della Salute, and there he found the house.

Again resisting the impulse to delay, he rang the bell and gave his

title and name.

"What do you want?" a woman's voice asked.

"I'd like to speak to Dottor Moro," he said, announcing at least the

most immediate of his desires.

"He can't see anyone she said shortly.

"I saw him before Brunetti said, then added, in the hope that it would

give force to his request, 'at the school." He waited to see if this

would have any effect on the woman, but then went on, "It's necessary

that I speak to him."

She made a noise, but it was cut off by the electrical buzz of the door

release, leaving Brunetti to guess at its nature. He pushed open the

door, passed quickly through a hallway, and stopped at the bottom of a

staircase. At the top, a door opened and a tall woman came out on to

the landing. "Up here she said.

When he reached the top of the stairs, she turned and led him into the

apartment, closed the door behind him, then turned back to face him. He

was struck at first by the fact that, though surely not as old as he,

she had white hair, cut short just above her shoulders. It contrasted

sharply with her skin, dark as an Arab's, and with her eyes, as close

to black as he had ever seen eyes be.

She put out her hand. "I'm Luisa, Fernando's cousin."

Brunetti took her hand and gave his name and position. "I realize this

is a terrible time he began, planning how best to speak to her. Her

posture was rigid, her back as straight as if she had been told to

stand against a wall. She kept her eyes on his as they spoke.

When Brunetti added nothing to this self-evident truth, she asked,

"What do you want to know?"

"I'd like to ask him about his son's state of mind

"Why?" she demanded. Brunetti thought the answer to that should have

been obvious, and was taken aback by the vehemence with which she asked

the question.

"In a case such as this he began evasively, 'it's necessary to know as

much as possible about how the person was feeling and behaving, whether

there were perhaps any signs..."

"Of what?" She cut him off, making no attempt to disguise her anger or

her contempt. That he was going to kill

himself?" Before Brunetti could answer, she went on, "If that's what

you mean, for God's sake, then say so." Again she didn't wait for an

answer. The idea's ridiculous. It's disgusting. Ernesto would no

sooner kill himself than I would. He was a healthy boy. It's

insulting to suggest that he would." She closed her eyes and pressed

her lips together, fighting to regain control of herself.

Before Brunetti could say that he had made no insinuation of any kind,

Dottor Moro appeared in a doorway. That's enough, Luisa/ he said in a

soft voice. "You shouldn't say any more."

Though the man had spoken, it was the face of the woman Brunetti

studied. The stiffness of her posture lessened, and her body inclined

in her cousin's direction. She raised one hand towards him but made no

move to touch him. Instead, she nodded once, ignored Brunetti

completely, and turned away. Brunetti watched as she walked down the

corridor and through a door at the end.

When she was gone, Brunetti turned his attention to the doctor. Though

he knew this was impossible, Moro had aged a decade during the brief

time that had elapsed since Brunetti had last seen him. His skin was

pasty his eyes dull and reddened with tears, but it was in his posture

that Brunetti perceived most change, for it had taken on the forward

leaning curvature of an old man.

"I'm sorry to intrude on your grief, Dottore/ Brunetti began, 'but I

hope that by speaking to you now, I won't have to trouble you again."

Even to Brunetti, schooled as he was in the ways of professional

mendacity, this sounded so forced and artificial as to distance him

from the other man and his sorrow.

Moro waved his right hand in the air, a gesture that might just as

easily have been dismissal as acknowledgement. He wrapped his arms

around his stomach and bowed his head.

"Dottore," he went on, 'in the last few days or weeks, had

your son done anything that would lead you to suspect that he might

have been considering anything like this?" Moro's head was still bowed

so Brunetti could not see his eyes, nor had he any idea if the doctor

was paying attention.

He continued, "Dottore, I know how difficult this must be for you, but

it's important that I have this information."

Without looking up, Moro said, "I don't think you do."

The beg your pardon," Brunetti said.

"I don't think you have any idea of how difficult this is."

The truth of this made Brunetti blush. When his face had grown cool

again, Moro had still not bothered to look at him. After what seemed

to Brunetti a long time, the doctor raised his head. No tears stood in

his eyes, and his voice was as calm as it had been when he spoke to his

cousin. "I'd be very grateful if you'd leave now, Commissario."

Brunetti began to protest, but the doctor cut him off by raising his

voice, but only in volume: his tone remained calm and impersonal.

"Please don't argue with me. There is nothing at all that I have to

say to you. Not now, and not in the future." He took his arms from

their protective position around his middle and let them fall to his

sides. The have nothing further to say."

Brunetti was certain that it was futile to pursue the matter now,

equally certain that he would return and ask the same question again

after the doctor had had time to overcome his immediate agony. Since

he had learned of the boy's death, Brunetti had been assailed by the

desire to know if the man had other children, but couldn't bring

himself to ask. He had some sort of theoretical belief that their

existence would serve as consolation, however limited. He tried to put

himself in Moro's place and understand what solace he would find in the

survival of one of his own children, but his imagination shied away

from that horror. At the very thought, some force stronger than taboo

seized him, numbing his mind. Not daring to offer his hand or to say

anything further, Brunetti left the apartment.

From the Salute stop, he took the Number One to San Zaccaria and

started back toward the Questura. As he approached it, a group of

teenagers, three boys and two girls, cascaded down the Ponte dei Greci

and came towards him, arms linked, laughter radiating out from them.

Brunetti stopped walking and stood in the middle of the pavement,

waiting for this exuberant wave of youth to wash over him. Like the

Red Sea, they parted and swept around him: Brunetti was sure they

hadn't even noticed him in any real sense; he was merely a stationary

obstacle to be got round.

Both of the girls had cigarettes in their hands, something that usually

filled Brunetti with the desire to tell them, if they valued their

health and well-being, to stop. Instead, he turned and looked after

them, filled with a sense of almost religious awe at the sight of their

youth and joy.

By the time he reached his office, the feeling had passed. On his desk

he found the first of the many forms that were generated by any case of

suicide; he didn't bother to fill it out. It was only after he heard

from Venturi that he would know how to proceed.

He called down to the officers' room, but neither Vianello nor Pucetti

was there. He dialled Signorina Elettra's extension and asked her to

begin a complete search through all the sources available to her,

official and unofficial, for information on Fernando Moro's careers as

both a doctor and a Member of Parliament. Saying that she had already

begun, she promised to have something for him later in the day.

The thought of lunch displeased him: food seemed an irrelevant

extravagance. He felt a gnawing desire to see his family, though he

knew his current mood would render him so solicitous as to make them

uncomfortable. He called Paola and told her he couldn't make it home

for lunch, saying that something had come up at the Questura that would

keep him there and, yes, yes, he'd eat something and be home at the

regular time.

"I hope it's not too bad," Paola said, letting him know that she had

registered his tone, however neutral he had tried to make his words.

I'll see you later," he said, still unwilling to tell her what had

happened. "Hug the kids for me," he said before he hung up.

He sat at his desk for a few minutes, then drew some papers towards him

and looked at them, reading through the words, understanding each one

but not certain he understood what they intended to say. He set them

aside, then pulled them back and read them again; this time the

sentences made sense to him, though he could see no reason why anyone

should find their messages important.

He went to the window and studied the crane that stood constant guard

over the church and the restoration that had yet to begin. He had read

or been told once how much the equally motionless cranes that loomed

over the empty shell of the opera house cost the city to maintain each

day. Where did all the money go? he wondered. Who was it that reaped

such enormous profits from so much inactivity? Idly, keeping his mind

occupied with matters other than the death of young men, he began rough

calculations. If the cranes cost five thousand Euros a day, it would

cost the city almost two million Euros to keep them there a year,

whether they worked or not. He stood for a long time, numbers moving

around in his head in far greater activity than had been shown by any

of those cranes for some time.

Abruptly he turned away and went back to his desk. There was no one to

call, so he left his office, went downstairs and out of the Questura.

He walked to the bar at the foot of the bridge, where he had a panino

and a glass of red wine and let the words of the day's newspaper pass

under his eyes.

4i

Though he prevaricated as much as he could, Brunetti still had no

choice but eventually to return to the Questura. He stopped in the

officers' room to look for Vianello and found him there with Pucetti.

The younger officer started to get to his feet, but Brunetti waved him

back. There was only one other policeman in the room, sitting at a

desk off to one side, talking on the phone.

"Anything?" he asked the two seated policemen.

Pucetti glanced at Vianello, acknowledging his right to speak first.

"I took him back," the Inspector began, 1jut he wouldn't let me go in

with him." He shrugged this away and asked, "You, sir?"

The spoke to Moro and to his cousin, who was there with him. She said

the boy couldn't have killed himself, seemed pretty insistent on it."

Something kept Brunetti from telling the others how easy it had been

for Moro to dismiss him.

"His cousin, you said?" Vianello interrupted, echoing his

neutrality.

"That's what she told me." The habit of doubt, Brunetti reflected, the

habit of seeking the lowest possible common moral denominator, had been

bred into all of them. He wondered if there were some sort of

psychological equation which correlated years of service with the

police and an inability to believe in human goodness. And whether it

was possible, or for how long it would be possible, to go back and

forth between his professional world and his private world without

introducing the contamination of the first to the second.

His attention was recalled by Vianello, who had just finished saying

something.

"Excuse me?" Brunetti said.

"I asked if his wife was there Vianello repeated.

Brunetti shook his head. "I don't know. No one else came in while I

was there, but there's no reason she would want to talk to me."

"Is there a wife?" Pucetti asked, emphasizing the first word.

Rather than admit that he didn't know, Brunetti said, "I asked

Signorina Elettra to see what she can find out about the family."

There was something in the papers about them, I think," Vianello said.

"Years ago." Brunetti and Pucetti waited for him to continue, but all

the Inspector finally said was, "I don't remember, but I think it was

something about the wife."

"Whatever it is, she'll find it Pucetti declared.

Years ago, Brunetti would have responded with condescension to

Pucetti's childlike faith in Signorina Elettra's powers, as one would

to the excesses of the peasant believers in the liquefaction of the

blood of San Gennaro. Himself presently numbered among that unwashed

throng, he made no demurral.

"Why don't you tell the Commissario what you've told me?" Vianello

asked Pucetti, drawing him back from his devotions and Brunetti back

from his reflections.

The portiere told me that the gate is kept locked after ten at night

the young officer began, tut most faculty members have keys, and

students who stay out later than that have to ring him to let them

in."

"And?" Brunetti asked, sensing Pucetti's reservations.

"I'm not sure," Pucetti answered, then explained. Two of the boys I

spoke to, separately, that is, seemed to make fun of the idea. I asked

why, and one of them smiled and went like this," Pucetti concluded,

raising the thumb of his right hand towards his mouth.

Brunetti registered this but left it to Pucetti to continue. I'd say

the boys are right and he's a drunk, the portiere. It was what eleven

in the morning when I spoke to him, and he was already halfway

there."

"Did any of the other boys mention this?"

"I didn't want to push them on it, sir. I didn't want any of them to

know just what I had learned from the others. It's always better if

they think I already know everything there is to know: that way, they

think I'll know when they lie. But I got the feeling that they can get

in and out when they please."

Brunetti nodded for him to continue.

"I'm not sure I learned much more than that, sir. Most of them were so

shocked that all they could do was ask more questions," Pucetti

answered.

"What exactly did you ask them?" Brunetti inquired.

"What you told me to, sir: how well they knew Moro and if they had

spoken to him in the last few days. None of them could think of

anything special the boy had said or done, nor that he had been

behaving strangely, and none of them said that Moro had been a

particular friend." "And the faculty?" Brunetti asked.

"Same thing. None of the ones I spoke to could remember anything

strange about Moro's behaviour in the last few days, and all of them

said he was a fine, fine boy but were quick to insist that they really

didn't know him very well."

All three of them recognized the phenomenon: most people refused to

know anything. It was rare for any person who was subject to

questioning or interrogation to admit to familiarity with the subject

of police inquiries. One of the texts Paola had dealt with in her

doctoral thesis was a medieval one entitled The Cloud of Unknowing. For

an instant Brunetti pictured it as a warm, dry place to which all

witnesses and potential witnesses fled in lemming-like terror and where

they huddled until no single question remained to be asked.

Pucetti went on. "I wanted to speak to his roommate, but he wasn't

there last night, nor the night before." Seeing interest in their

faces, he explained, Twenty-three boys, including Moro's roommate, were

on a weekend trip to the Naval Academy in Livorno. Soccer. The game

was Sunday afternoon, and then they spent yesterday and this morning

going to classes there. They don't get home until this evening."

Vianello shook his head in tired resignation. "I'm afraid this is all

we're going to get from any of them." Pucetti shrugged in silent

agreement.

Brunetti stopped himself from remarking that it was what they could

expect from a public which viewed authority and all who attempted to

impose it as adversaries. He had read enough to know that there were

countries whose citizens did not perceive their government as an

inimical force, where they believed, instead, that the government

existed to serve their needs and respond to their wishes. How would he

react if someone he knew were to maintain this to be true here, in this

city, in this country? Religious mania would be less convincing proof

of mental imbalance.

Vianello and Pucetti were to go back that afternoon and question the

rest of the boys and the remaining faculty. Leaving it at that,

Brunetti told them he would be up in his office, and left.

Curiosity and the desire to see Signorina Elettra and learn what she

had managed to discover led him off the stairs at her floor and into

her small office. Here he had the sensation that he had stepped into a

jungle or a forest: four tall trees with enormous leaves, broad, dark

green and shiny, stood in terra cotta pots against the back wall. With

their darkness as a backdrop, Signorina Elettra, today dressed in

colours usually seen only on Buddhist monks, sat at her desk. The

total effect was of an enormous piece of exotic fruit exposed in front

of the tree from which it had fallen.

"Lemons?" he asked.

"Yes/

"Where did you get them?"

"A friend of mine just directed Lulu at the opera. He had them sent

over after the last performance."

"Lulu?"

She smiled. "The very same."

"I don't remember lemons in Lulu," he said, puzzled, but willing, as

ever, to be graced with illumination.

"He set the opera in Sicily," she explained.

"Ah," Brunetti whispered, trying to remember the plot. The music,

mercifully, was gone. At a loss for what else to say, he asked, "Did

you go and see it?"

She took so long to answer that, at first, he thought he had somehow

offended her with the question. Finally, she said, "No, sir. My

standards are very low, of course, but I do draw the line at going to

the opera in a tent. In a parking lot."

Brunetti, whose aesthetic principles were entrenched well behind that

same line, nodded and asked, "Have you been able to find out anything

about Moro?"

Her smile was fainter, but it was still recognizably a smile. "Some

things have come in. I'm waiting for a friend in Siena to tell me more

about the wife Federica."

"What about her?" Brunetti asked.

"She was involved in an accident there."

"What kind of accident?"

"Hunting."

"Hunting? A woman in a hunting accident?" he asked, his disbelief

audible.

She raised her eyebrows as if to suggest that anything at all was

possible in a world where Lulu was set in Sicily, but instead said, "I

shall pass over the glaring sexism in that remark, Commissario." She

paused a didactic moment, then continued, "It happened a couple of

years ago. She was staying with friends in the countryside near Siena.

One afternoon, while she was out for a walk, she was shot in the leg.

Luckily, she was found before she bled to death and taken to the

hospital."

"Was the hunter ever found?"

"No, but it was hunting season so they assumed that a hunter had heard

her and thought she was an animal and shot at the noise without seeing

what it was."

"And didn't bother to come and see what he had shot?" an indignant

Brunetti asked. He added another question. "Or when he saw what he

had shot, he didn't help her or call for help?"

"It's what they do," she said, her voice matching his own in

indignation. "You read the papers, don't you, every year when the

season opens, about the way three or four of them get shot on the first

day? It goes on all during hunting season. It's not only the ones who

stumble over their own guns and blow their brains out." Brunetti

thought her tone was devoid of anything approaching sympathy as she

said this. They shoot one another, too," she went on, 'and get left to

bleed to death because no one wants to run the risk of being arrested

for having shot someone."

He started to speak, but she cut him off and added, "As far as I'm

concerned, it can't happen often enough."

Brunetti waited for her to calm down and retract her words but then

decided to leave the issue of her feelings toward

hunters unexamined and asked, "Were the police called? When she was

shot?"

"I don't know. That's what I'm waiting for the police report."

"Where is she now?" Brunetti asked.

That's something else I'm trying to find out."

"She's not with her husband?"

"I don't know. I had a look at the files at the Comune, but she's not

listed as resident at his address, even though they own the apartment

jointly." So habituated had Brunetti become to her useful criminality

that it did not for an instant trouble him that a person with greater

sympathy for legal precision would translate her phrase, 'had a look

at' as 'broke into'.

There could certainly be many explanations for why Moro's wife was not

registered as resident at his Dorsoduro address, though the most

obvious interpretation was that she did not live with her husband. "Let

me know when you get hold of the report on the shooting he said,

wondering if this would launch her into further denunciation. Like

most Venetians, Brunetti had no interest in hunting, judging it an

endeavour that was expensive, inconvenient, and excessively loud.

Further, experience as a policeman as well as his habit of reflecting

upon human behaviour had too often suggested a frightening correlation

between a man's interest in firearms and feelings of sexual

inadequacy.

"It could have been a warning," she said without preamble.

The know," he answered, having thought this the instant she told him

about the shooting. "But of what?"

The scepticism that had seeped into Bmnetti's bones over the years

forced him to suspect that Signora Moro's accident might have been

something other than that. She must have cried out when she was shot,

and the sound of a woman's scream would surely have brought any hunter

running. Low as his opinion of hunters was, Brunetti could not believe

that one of them would leave a woman lying on the ground, bleeding.

That conviction led him to the consideration of what sort of person

would be capable of doing so, which in its turn led him to consider

what other sorts of violence such a person might be capable of.

He added to these speculations the fact that Moro had served in

Parliament for some time but had resigned about two years ago.

Coincidence could link events either in kind or subject or time: the

same sort of thing happened to different people or different things

happened to the same person, or things happened at the same time. Moro

had resigned from Parliament around the time his wife was injured.

Ordinarily, this would hardly arouse suspicion, even in someone as

instinctively mistrustful as Brunetti, were it not that the death of

their son provided a point from which to begin a process of speculative

triangulation around the ways in which the third event might be related

to the other two.

Brunetti thought of Parliament in the way most Italians thought of

their mothers-in-law. Not due the loyalties created by ties of blood,

a mother-in-law still demanded obedience and reverence while never

behaving in a manner that would merit either. This alien presence,

imposed upon a person's life by sheerest chance, made ever-increasing

demands in return for the vain promise of domestic harmony. Resistance

was futile, for opposition inevitably led to repercussions too devious

to be foreseen.

He lifted the phone and dialled his home number. When the machine

answered after four rings, he hung up without speaking, bent down to

his bottom drawer, and took out the phone book. He flipped it open to

the Ps and kept turning pages until he found Perulli, Augusto. He

tossed the book back into the drawer and dialled the number.

After the third ring a man's voice answered. "Perulli."

This is Brunetti. I need to speak to you."

After a long pause, the man said, "I wondered when you'd call."

"Yes," was Brunetti's only response.

"I can see you in half an hour. For an hour. Then not until

tomorrow

"I'll come now Brunetti said.

He kicked the drawer shut and left his office, then the Questura.

Because he had half an hour, he chose to walk to Campo San Maurizio,

and because he was early, he chose to stop and say hello to a friend in

her workshop. But his mind was on things other than jewellery, so he

did little more than exchange a kiss and promise to bring Paola to

dinner some time soon; then he crossed the campo and headed up towards

the Grand Canal.

5"

He had last been to the apartment six years ago, near the end of a long

investigation of a trail of drug money that led from the noses of

adolescents in New York to a discreet account in Geneva, a trail that

paused long enough in Venice to invest in a couple of paintings meant

to join the money in the vault of that eminently discreet bank. The

money had made its way safely through the empyrean realms of

cyberspace, but the paintings, made of less celestial matter, had been

stopped at Geneva airport. One by Palma il Vecchio and the other by

Marieschi and thus both part of the artistic heritage of the country,

neither could be exported, at least not legally, from Italy.

A mere four hours after the discovery of the paintings, Augusto Perulli

had called the Cambinieri to report their theft. No proof could be

found that Perulli had been informed of their discovery a possibility

that would raise the unthinkable idea of police corruption and so it

was decided that Brunetti, who had gone to school with Perulli and had

remained on friendly terms with him for decades, should be sent to talk

to him. That decision had not been taken until the day after the

paintings were found, by which time the man who was transporting them

had somehow been released from police custody, though the precise

nature of the bureaucratic oversight permitting that error had never

been explained to the satisfaction of the Italian police.

When Brunetti finally did talk to his old schoolfriend, Perulli said

that he had become aware of the paintings' disappearance only the day

before but had no idea how it could have happened. When Brunetti asked

how it could be that only two paintings had been taken, Perulli

prevented all further questioning by giving Brunetti his word of honour

that he knew nothing about it, and Brunetti believed him.

Two years later, the man who had been detained with the paintings was

again arrested by the Swiss, this time for trafficking in illegal

aliens, and this time in Zurich. In the

5i hope of making a deal with the police, he admitted that he had

indeed been given those paintings by Perulli, and asked to take them

across the border to their new owner, but by then Perulli had been

elected to Parliament and was thus exempt from arrest or prosecution.

"Ciao, Guido Perulli said when he opened the door to Brunetti,

extending his hand.

Brunetti was conscious of how theatrical was his own hesitation before

he took Perulli's hand: Perulli was equally conscious of it. Neither

pretended to be anything but wary of the other, and both were open in

studying the other for signs of the years that had passed since their

last meeting.

"It's been a long time, hasn't it?" Perulli said, turning away and

leading Brunetti into the apartment. Tall and slender, Perulli still

moved with the grace and fluidity of the youth he had shared with

Brunetti and their classmates. His hair was still thick, though longer

than he had worn it in the past, his skin smooth and taut, rich with

the afterglow of a summer spent in the sun. When was it that he had

begun searching the faces of the acquaintances of his youth for the

telltale signs of age? Brunetti wondered.

The apartment was much as Brunetti remembered it: high ceilinged and

well-proportioned, sofas and chairs inviting people to sit at their

ease and speak openly, perhaps indiscreetly. Portraits of men and

women from former eras hung on the walls: Perulli, he knew, spoke of

them casually, suggesting that they were ancestors, when in reality his

family had for generations lived in Castello and dealt in sausage and

preserved meat.

New were the ranks of silver-framed photos that stood on a not

particularly distinguished copy of a sixteenth-century Florentine

credenza. Brunetti paused to examine them and saw reflected in them

the trajectory of Perulli's career: the young man with his friends; the

university graduate posed with one of the leaders of the political

party to which Perulli

had then given allegiance; while the adult man stood arm in arm with a

former mayor of the city, the Minister of the Interior, and the

Patriarch of Venice. Behind them, in an even more elaborate frame,

Perulli's face smiled from the cover of a news magazine that had since

abandoned publication. This photo, and Perulli's need that people see

it, filled Brunetti, against his will, with an enormous sadness.

"Can I offer you something?" Perulli asked from the other side of the

living room, standing in front of a leather sofa and clearly wanting to

settle this before he sat down.

"No, nothing," Brunetti said. "Thanks."

Perulli sat, pulling fussily at both legs of his trousers to keep them

from stretching at the knees, a gesture Brunetti had observed before,

but only in the old. Did he sweep the bottom part of his overcoat

aside before he sat down on the vaporetto?

The don't suppose you want to pretend we're still friends?" Perulli

asked.

The don't want to pretend anything, Augusto," Brunetti said. The just

want to ask you a few questions, and I'd like you to give me honest

answers."

"Not like the last time?" Perulli asked with a grin he tried to make

boyish but succeeded only in making sly. It caused Brunetti a moment's

uncertainty: there was something different about Perulli's mouth, about

the way he held it.

"No, not like the last time," Brunetti said, surprised at how calm he

sounded, calm but tired.

"And if I can't answer them?"

Then tell me so, and I'll go

Perulli nodded, and then said, The didn't have any choice, you know,

Guido."

Brunetti acted as though the other hadn't spoken and asked, "Do you

know Fernando Moro?"

He watched Perulli react to the name with something stronger than mere

recognition.

"Yes."

"How well do you know him?"

"He's a couple of years older than we are, and my father was a friend

of his, so I knew him well enough to say hello to on the street or

maybe go and have a drink with, at least when we were younger. But

certainly not well enough to call him a friend." Some sense warned

Brunetti what was going to come next, so he was prepared to hear

Perulli say, "Not like I know you and so did not respond.

"Did you see him in Rome?"

"Socially or professionally?"

"Either."

"Socially, no, but I might have run into him a few times at

Montecitorio. But we represented different parties, so we didn't work

together."

"Committees?"

"No, we worked on different ones."

"What about his reputation?"

"What about it?"

Brunetti restrained the sigh that seeped up from his chest and answered

neutrally, "As a politician. What did people think of him?"

Perulli uncrossed his long legs and immediately recrossed them the

opposite way. He lowered his head and raised his hand to his right

eyebrow and rubbed at it a few times, something he had always done when

he considered an idea or had to think about his response. Seeing

Perulli's face from this new angle, Brunetti noticed that something was

different about the angle of his cheekbones, which seemed sharper and

more clearly defined than they had been when he was a student. His

voice, when he finally spoke, was mild. "I'd say people generally

thought he was honest." He lowered his hand and tried a small smile,

"Perhaps too honest." He enlarged the smile, that same engaging smile

that girls, then women, had proven unable to resist.

"What does that mean?" Brunetti asked, striving to fight against the

anger he felt growing in response to the sniggling tone of Perulli's

answers.

Perulli didn't answer immediately, and as he thought about what to say

or how to say it, he pursed his lips into a tight little circle a few

times, a gesture Brunetti had never noticed in him before. Finally he

said, "I suppose it means that he was sometimes difficult to work

with."

That told Brunetti nothing, so he asked again, "What does that mean?"

Perulli couldn't restrain a quick gleam of anger as he looked across at

Brunetti, but when he spoke his voice was calm, almost too calm. To

the people who disagreed with him, it meant that it was impossible to

persuade him to look at things from a different point of view."

"Meaning their point of view?" Brunetti asked neutrally.

Perulli did not rise to the bait and, instead, said only, "From any

point of view different from the one he had decided on."

"Did you ever have this experience with him?"

Perulli shook the idea away with a negative motion of his head. "I

told you, we never worked on the same committees."

"What committees did he work on?" Brunetti asked.

Perulli put his head back against the top of his chair and closed his

eyes, and Brunetti could not stop himself from thinking that the

gesture was consciously posed to show the energy Perulli was willing to

expend in order to answer the question.

After what seemed an inordinately long time, Perulli said, "As far as I

can remember, he was on the committee that examined the Post Office,

and one that had something to do with farming, and a third one .. ." He

broke off and glanced at Brunetti with a very small, private smile,

then he continued, "I don't really remember what that one was. Maybe

the mission in Albania, all that humanitarian aid stuff, or maybe the

one about farmers' pensions. I can't be sure."

"And what did these committees do?"

What all of them do Perulli said, his voice honestly surprised that a

citizen should need to ask. They study the problem."

"And then?"

"Make recommendations."

"To whom?"

To the government, of course."

"And then what happens to their recommendations?"

They're examined and studied, and a decision is made. And if it's

necessary, a law is passed or the existing law is changed."

"As simple as that, eh?" Brunetti said.

Perulli's smile didn't have time to blossom fully before the frost of

Brunetti's tone blighted that smile.

"You can joke if you want, Guido, but it's not easy, running a country

like this."

"You really think you run it?"

"Not I, personally," Perulli said in a tone that suggested some regret

at this fact. "Of course not."

"All of you together, then? The people in Parliament?"

"If not we, then who?" Perulli demanded, voice rising to something

that resembled indignation but was closer to anger.

"Indeed," Brunetti said simply. After a long pause, he went on, his

voice perfectly normal, "Do you know anything else about these

committees, perhaps who else served on them?"

Deprived of an immediate target for his displeasure by Brunetti's

sudden change of subject, Perulli hesitated before he answered. "I'm

not sure there's much to be said about any one of them. They aren't

important, and usually new members or those who aren't well connected

get appointed to them."

The see Brunetti said neutrally. "Do you know any of the other people

who served on these committees?"

He was afraid he had pushed Perulli too far and that the man might

dismiss his question or refuse to give him any more time, but after a

moment the parliamentarian answered, "I know one or two of them, but

not at all well."

"Could you talk to them?"

"About what?" Perulli asked, immediately suspicious.

"Moro."

"No." His answer was immediate.

"Why not?" Brunetti asked, though he was sure he knew the answer.

"Because, when you called, you said you wanted to ask me some

questions. You didn't say you wanted me to start doing your job for

you." As he spoke, Perulli's voice grew more heated. He looked at

Brunetti, who said nothing, and that silence seemed to be enough to

unleash even more of Perulli's anger. "I don't know why you want to

know about Moro, but it's a good thing someone's going to take a closer

look at him." Red spots the size of golf balls flashed into being on

his cheeks.

"Why?" Brunetti asked.

Again, Perulli uncrossed his legs, but this time he leaned forward,

towards Brunetti, the forefinger of his right hand jabbing the space

between them. "Because he's a sanctimonious bastard, always talking

about fraud and dishonesty and .. ." Here Perulli's voice changed,

deepening and dragging out the final syllables of words in a way

Brunetti realized was very much like Moro's. "Our responsibility to

the citizen," he went on, the imitation suddenly becoming sarcastic

exaggeration. "We can't continue to treat our offices, this

Parliament, as though it were a trough and we a herd of pigs," Perulli

intoned. It was clear to Brunetti that he was again quoting Moro.

Brunetti thought the other man would go on: Augusto had never known

when a joke had gone on long enough. But Perulli surprised him by

lapsing into silence, though he

couldn't resist the temptation to goad Brunetti by saying, "If he's

done something, it's no surprise to me: he's no different from any one

of us."

"With your front trotters in the trough?" Brunetti asked mildly.

He might just as well have slapped the other man across the face.

Perulli lurched forward, his right hand aiming for Bj Brunetti's

throat, but he had forgotten the low table between "I them. It caught

Perulli just below the knees and sent him sprawling across and then

beyond it.

Brunetti had risen to his feet while Perulli was clattering across the

table. Seeing him on the floor, stunned, he started to reach down to

help him to his feet but then stopped himself. Curious, he stepped to

one side and bent over to look closer. Perulli's hair had fallen

forward, and Brunetti could see the little round, puckered scar just

behind the left ear. Gratified to have detected the cause of Perulli's

youthful appearance, he stood and waited, and when he saw Perulli pull

his knees up under him and place his hands flat on the floor on either

side of him, Brunetti turned and left the apartment.

When he got outside and looked at his watch, Brunetti was surprised to

see that it was almost five. He found himself very hungry and

geographically halfway between work and home. He didn't know what he'd

find to eat at home, and by the time he got there and had something, it

would be too late to bother to go back to the Questura. He sent the

feet of memory up towards San Marco, recalling every bar or trattoria

he knew on the way, then, at the thought of what he would encounter in

that direction, he re plotted the trip via Campo Sant' Angelo and back

through Campo San Fantin. Knowing it was absurd and aware that he had

himself chosen to forgo lunch, he was assaulted by a wave of self-pity:

he was doing his job as best he knew how, and he found himself hungry

at a time when it would be impossible to get a meal. He remembered

then one of the few stories his father ever told about the war, though

he recalled it in a garbled fashion, for it had never been told the

same way twice. At some point, marching across Lower Saxony in the

days just after the end of the war, his father and two companions had

been

befriended by a stray dog that emerged from under a bombed house to

follow them. The next day, they ate the dog. Over the course of

decades, this story had taken on talismanic powers for Brunetti, and he

found himself unable to keep his mind from it whenever anyone talked

about food in a way he thought too precious, as though it were a

fashion accessory rather than a basic need. All he had to do was hear

one of Paola's friends go on about her delicate digestion and how she

couldn't even bear to buy vegetables that had been displayed next to

garlic, and the story came to mind. He remembered, years ago, sitting

across the table from a man who told the other guests how impossible it

was for him to eat any meat that had not come from his own butcher,

that he could taste the difference in quality instantly. When the man

finished the story, and after he had received the required accolade for

his delicacy of palate, Brunetti had told the story of the dog.

He cut through to Campo San Fantin and stopped in a bar for two

tramezzini and a glass of white wine. While he was there, an

attractive dark-haired woman came in for a coffee wearing a tight

leopard-patterned coat and an outrageous black hat that looked like a

black pizza balanced on a skullcap. He studied her for a moment as she

sipped at her coffee; indeed, he joined every man in the bar in

studying her. All of them, he concluded, joined with him in giving

thanks that she had come in to lift their hearts and brighten their

day.

Cheered by having seen her, he left the bar and walked back to the

Quesrura. As he entered his office, he saw a folder lying on his desk,

and when he opened it he was astonished to discover the autopsy report

on Ernesto Moro. His immediate reaction was to wonder what Venturi was

up to, what manoeuvre or power play he might be involved in and against

whom. His speed in having performed the autopsy could be explained

only as an attempt to win Brunetti's favour, and that favour could be

of use to the pathologist only

if he were planning to move against some rival or perceived rival

either in the police or the medical system.

Brunetti refused to speculate further about Venturi's motives and

directed his attention to the report. Ernesto Moro had been in

excellent health at the time of his death, entirely free of any sign of

disease, not a single cavity in his teeth, though there was evidence of

previous orthodontic work. His left leg had been broken in the past,

perhaps as long as ten years ago, but had healed completely; tonsils

and appendix were still present.

The cause of death was strangulation. There was no way to judge how

far his body had fallen before the noose had tightened around his

throat, but it had not been sufficient to break his neck, so the boy

had strangled to death. It had not been, Venturi stated, a quick

process: the rope had caused extensive bruising of the front and right

side of his neck. This suggested that his last moments had been spent

in instinctive convulsions against the tightening cord. There followed

the exact dimensions of the shower stall in which his body had been

found and the possible extension of arms as long as his. Brunetti

thought of those sweeping marks on the wall of the shower.

From the evidence of the food in the boy's stomach, it was likely that

he had died some time between midnight and three in the morning. There

was no evidence of drug use, and it seemed that he had consumed only a

moderate amount of wine with his last meal, probably no more than one

glass and certainly not enough to cloud his judgement in any way.

Brunetti put the papers back in the folder and left it lying open on

his desk. The report said everything just as it said nothing. He

tried to subtract the knowledge that Signora Moro had been shot and

view her son's death as a separate event. The obvious possible motives

were thus some disappointment the boy had suffered or the desire to pay

someone back for a perceived injury. Once the mother was

put back into the equation, the possible motives expanded

exponentially. Instead of being viewed as the prime mover in the

action, the boy became a means and some other person the mover.

Following this filament of vague speculation, Brunetti saw " that the

mother's survival suggested she was not the prime | target, which left

Moro himself. But even that, he realized, led nowhere: until he had an

idea of what Moro might be a target of, or for whom, all speculation

was as flimsy as the jumbled bits and pieces of information upon which

he chose to base it.

The arrival of Signorina Elettra put an end to his fragmentary musings.

"You saw that?" she asked as she came in, nodding towards the autopsy

report.

"Yes. What do you make of it?"

"I can't understand it, why a boy like that would kill himself. It

doesn't make any sense at all."

"It's not so unusual, I'm afraid, kids killing themselves."

His remark seemed to cause her pain. She stopped in front of his desk,

another folder in one hand. "But why?"

"I spoke to one of the cadets over there. He said there was no way to

be sure about the future, or that there even would be one for them."

"That's nonsense," she snapped angrily. "Of course there's always a

future."

"I'm just repeating what he told me."

"A cadet?" she asked.

"Yes."

She was silent for a long time, then finally said, I went out with one

of them for a while."

Immediately curious, Brunetti asked, "When you were a student?"

Her mouth moved in a sly smile: "Not last week, certainly." Then she

went on, "Yes, when I was eighteen." She looked down at the floor in a

moment's reflection and then said, "No, as a matter of fact, I was only

sixteen. That explains it."

He knew a set-up line when he heard it. "Explains what?"

"How I could have put up with him

Brunetti half rose in his chair and gestured towards the other. "Have

a seat, please." She swept one hand behind her as she sat,

straightening her skirt, then placed the folder flat on her lap.

"What did you have to put up with?" he asked, puzzled by the idea of

Signorina Elettra as a person capable of enduring anything she didn't

wish to.

"I was going to say that he was a Fascist and that they all were, and

probably still are today, but it might not be true of all of them. So

I'll say only that he was a Fascist, and a bully, and a snob and that

most of his friends were, too." From long experience of her, Brunetti

could sense when Signorina Elettra was doing no more than practising

verbal solfeggi and when she was preparing to launch into an aria; he

detected signs of the second.

"But you see that only now?" he asked, offering her the briefest of

recitativi as a means of prompting the aria.

"We used to see them, my friends and I, swarming around the city in

their capes, and we thought they were the most exciting, wonderful boys

in the world. Whenever one of them spoke to one of us, it was as

though the heavens had opened to allow a god to descend. And then one

of them .. ." she began. Then, seeking the proper words, she changed

her mind and went on, "I began going out with one of them."

"Going out?" he inquired.

"For a coffee, for a walk, just to go down to the Giardini to sit on a

bench and talk." With a rueful smile, she corrected herself. To

listen, that is." She smiled across at him. "I believe one could

employ a new noun here, sir: a listen, instead of a conversation.

That's what I had whenever we met: a listen."

"Perhaps it was a quicker way for you to get to know him Brunetti

suggested drily.

"Yes," she said brusquely. The got to know him."

He didn't know quite what question to ask. "And what was it that makes

you say those things about him?"

"That he was a snob and a Fascist and a bully?"

"Yes."

"You know Barbara, don't you?" she asked, mentioning her older

sister.

"Yes."

"She was in medical school at the time, living in Padova, so I didn't

see much of her except on the weekends. I'd been going out with Renzo

for about three weeks when she came home one weekend, and I asked her

to meet him. I thought he was so wonderful, so clever, so thoughtful."

She snorted at the memory of her own youth and went on. "Imagine that,

thoughtful. At eighteen." She took a deep breath and smiled at him,

so he knew that this story was going to have a happy ending.

"Whenever we were together, he talked about politics, history, all

those things I'd heard Barbara and my parents talk about for so long.

Nothing he said sounded much like what they said. But he had dark blue

eyes, and he had a car at home, in Milano, a convertible." Again, she

smiled at the memory of the girl she had been, and signed.

When she seemed reluctant to continue, he asked, "And did Barbara meet

him?"

"Oh yes, and they hated one another after three words. I'm sure he

thought she was some sort of Communist cannibal, and she must have

thought he was a Fascist pig." She smiled again at him.

"And?"

"One of them was right."

He laughed outright and asked, "How long did it take you to realize

it?"

"Oh, I suppose I knew it all along, but he did have those eyes. And

there was that convertible." She laughed. "He carried a photo of it

in his wallet."

At first, it was difficult for Brunetti to picture a Signorina Elettra

capable of this folly, but after a moment's reflection, he realized

that it didn't surprise him all that much.

"What happened?"

"Oh, once Barbara started on him, when we got home, it was as if how do

they describe it in the Bible? as if "the scales fell from my eyes"?

Well, it was something like that. All I had to do was stop looking at

him and start listening to what he said and thinking about it, and I

could see what a vicious creep he was."

"What sort of things?"

"The same things people like him are always saying: the glory of the

nation, the need to have strong values in the family, the heroism of

men in war." She stopped here and shook her head again, like a person

emerging from rubble. "It's extraordinary, the sort of things a person

can listen to without realizing what nonsense it is."

"Nonsense?"

"Well, when the people who say it are still children, I suppose it's

nonsense. It's when adults say it that it's dangerous."

"What became of him?"

"Oh, I don't know. I imagine he graduated and went into the Army and

ended up torturing prisoners in Somalia. He was that kind of

person."

"Violent?"

"No, not really, but very easily led. He had all of the core beliefs.

You know the sort of things they say: honour and discipline and the

need for order. I suppose he got it from his family. His father had

been a general or something, so it's all he'd ever been exposed to."

"Like you, only different?" Brunetti asked, smiling. He knew her

sister, and so he knew what the politics of the Zorzis were.

"Exactly, only no one in my family has ever had a good

word to say about discipline or the need for order." The pride with

which she said this was unmistakable.

He started to ask another question, but she got to her feet, as though

suddenly conscious of how much she had revealed, and leaned forward to

place the file on his desk. That's what's come in, sir," she said with

a briskness that was strangely dissonant with the easy familiarity of

their conversation up to that point.

Thank you," he said.

"It should all be clear, but if you need any explanation, call."

He noticed that she didn't tell him to come down to her office or to

ask her to come up to explain. The geographical limits of their

formality had been reestablished. |

"Certainly," he said, and then repeated, as she turned i toward the

door, Thank you."

The folder contained photocopies of newspaper articles about Fernando

Moro's careers as doctor and politician. The first seemed to have led

to the second: he had first caught the public eye about six years ago,

when, as one of the inspectors commissioned to examine the quality of

hospital care in the Veneto, he had submitted a report calling into

question the statistics issued by the provincial government, statistics

which boasted one of the lowest patient to doctor ratios on the

continent. It was the Moro Report which indicated that the low figure

resulted from the inclusion in the statistics of three new hospitals,

facilities which were planned to provide medical care at the highest

level. Money had been allocated for their construction, and that money

had been spent, and thus the statistics included these hospitals and

factored in all of the services they were planned to provide. The

resulting figures were a three-day marvel, for the Veneto was thus

shown to have the best health care in Europe.

It was Fernando Moro's report that pointed out the

inconvenient fact that those three hospitals, however grandiose their

plans, however extensive their staffs, and however varied the services

they were meant to provide, had never actually been built. Once their

services were subtracted from the tabulations, the health care provided

to the citizens of the Veneto fell to where its patients were

accustomed to judging it to be: somewhat below that of Cuba, though

certainly above that of Chad.

In the aftermath of the report, Moro had been lauded as a hero by the

press and had become one in the popular mind, but he found that the

administration of the hospital where he worked had decided that his

many talents would be better utilized if he were to take over the

administration of the old people's home attached to the hospital. His

protest that, as an oncologist, he would be better employed in the

hospital's oncology ward was brushed aside as false humility, and his

lateral transfer was confirmed.

This in its turn led to his decision to attempt to achieve public

office before his name dropped from public memory; perhaps a tactical

decision, but a no less successful one for that.

Moro had once remarked that his long familiarity with terminal illness

was perhaps the best preparation he could have had for a career in

Parliament. Late at night and only when among old and trusted friends,

he was rumoured to expand upon that metaphor, a fact which was not long

in filtering back to his fellow parliamentarians. This might well have

affected the nature of the committees to which he was appointed.

As he read the newspaper articles, all purporting to be neutral

presentation of fact but all tinted by the political affiliation of the

particular paper or journalist, Brunetti realized that he was colouring

the articles with the hues of his own memory. He had known, or at

least heard, about Moro for years, and as he tended to share the man's

political

leanings, he knew he was prejudiced in the man's favour and that he

presupposed his honesty. He knew just how dangerous this sort of

thinking was, especially for a policeman, yet Moro was hardly a

suspect: the totality of his grief excluded him from any suspicion of

involvement in his son's death. "Or else I've never had a son; or else

I've never had a soul Brunetti caught himself whispering out loud.

He looked up at the door, embarrassed to have been so distracted by his

thoughts, but no one was there. He continued reading: the other

articles merely repeated the essential information contained in the

first few. Regardless of how insinuating the tone of some of the

journalists, no matter how carefully they constructed their specious

explanations of Moro's behaviour, not even the dullest reader could

doubt the man's integrity.

The tone of innuendo became even stronger in some of the articles

dealing with Moro's sudden withdrawal from Parliament, a decision he

refused to attribute to anything other than 'personal reasons'. The

first article, written by one of the best-known apologists of the

Right, raised the rhetorical question of the sort of connection that

might exist between Moro's resignation and the arrest, two weeks

before, of one of the last members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. "None,

probably," Brunetti found himself whispering again, as had become his

annoying habit when reading this particular adornment of the free

press.

The shooting of Moro's wife was mentioned in two small articles,

neither of which did more than report the barest facts of the case. The

second article, however, provided the name of the people with whom she

was staying at the time of the shooting.

He picked up the phone and dialled 12, then asked for the number of

Giovanni Ferro in Siena or in the province of Siena. There were two,

and he took down both numbers.

He dialled the first number and a woman answered.

"Signora Ferro?"

Who's calling, please?"

This is Commissario Guido Brunetti, in Venice/ he said.

He heard a startled gasp and then she asked, voice tight and fast and

apparently beyond her control, Is it Federica?"

Tederica Moro?" he asked.

The woman was evidently too shaken to do more than answer, "Yes."

"Signora, nothing's happened to her, please believe me. I'm calling to

ask about the incident two years ago." She said nothing, but Brunetti

could hear her rapid breathing on the other end of the line. "Signora,

can you hear me? Are you all right?"

There was another long silence, and he was afraid she was going to hang

up or already had, but then her voice came back, "Who did you say you

were?"

"Commissario Guido Brunetti. I'm with the police in Venice, Signora."

Again, silence. "Signora, can you hear me?"

"Yes," she said, The can hear you." There was another long pause, and

then the woman said, "I'll call you back', and was gone, leaving

Brunetti with the memory of her terror and the strong aspirants of her

Tuscan speech.

And indeed, thought Brunetti, as he replaced the receiver, why should

she believe that he was who he said he was? There was no way to prove

it, and the call was being made about a woman who had been shot and

whose assailant, presumably, had never been found by the police

Brunetti claimed to represent.

The phone rang after a few minutes. He picked it up on the first ring

and gave his name.

"Good/ she said. "I wanted to be certain."

That's very wise of you, Signora/ he said. The hope you're reassured

that I am who I said I was."

"Yes/ she agreed, then went on, "What do you want to know about

Federica?"

"I'm calling about the shooting because there's a case it might be

related to. The newspapers said that she was staying with you and your

husband when it happened."

"Yes."

"Could you tell me something more about it, Signora?"

Yet again there was a long pause, and then the woman asked, "Have you

spoken to her?"

"Signora Moro?"

"Yes."

"No, I haven't, not yet." He waited for her to speak.

"I think you should talk to her Signora Ferro said.

There was something in the way she said the last word that warned

Brunetti not to dispute this. "I'd very much like to be agreed

amiably. "Could you tell me where I might find her?"

"Isn't she there?" the woman asked, the nervousness flooding back into

her voice.

He adopted his most soothing tone. "You're the first person I've

called, Signora. I haven't had time to try to locate Signora Moro." He

felt like an explorer on a glacier who suddenly sees an enormous

crevasse yawn open in front of him: so far he had said nothing about

the death of Signora Moro's son and to do so at this point would be

impossible. "Is she here with her husband?"

Her voice became bland and noncommittal. "They're separated," she

said.

"Ah, I didn't know that. But is she still here in Venice?"

He could all but follow her thoughts as she considered this. A

policeman would find her friend; sooner or later, he'd find her. "Yes/

she finally answered.

"Could you give me the address?"

Slowly she answered: "Yes, wait while I get it, please." There was a

soft tap as she set the phone down, then a long

silence, and then the woman was back. "It's San Marco 2823," she said,

then gave him the phone number, as well.

Brunetti thanked her and was considering what else he could ask her

when the woman said, "What you need to do is let the phone ring once

and then call back. She doesn't want to be disturbed."

"I can understand that, Signora/ he said, the memory of Ernesto Moro's

limp body suddenly appearing to him like the ghost of one of Ugolino's

sons.

The woman said goodbye and hung up, leaving Brunetti, he realized, in

possession of little more information than he had had before he made

the call.

He was aware of how dark his office had become. The late afternoon sun

had faded away, and he doubted that he could any longer see the numbers

on the phone clearly enough to dial them. He walked over to the switch

by the door and turned on the light and was surprised by the

unaccustomed order he had established on his desk while talking to

Signora Ferro: a stack of folders sat at the centre, a piece of paper

to one side, a pencil placed across it in a neat horizontal. He

thought of the obsessive neatness of his mother's house in the years

before she- lapsed into the senility in whose embrace she still lay,

and then the explosion of disorder in the house during the last months

before she was taken from it.

Seated at his desk again, he was suddenly overcome by exhaustion and

had to fight the impulse to lay his head on the desk and close his

eyes. It had been more than ten hours since they had been called to

the school, hours during which death and misery had soaked into him

like liquid into blotting paper. Not for the first time in his career

he found himself wondering how much longer he could continue to do this

work. In the past, he had comforted himself with the belief that a

vacation would help, and often his physical removal from the city and

the crimes he saw there did in fact serve to

lift his mood, at least for the time he was away. But he could think

of no removal in time or space that would lift from him the sense of

futility that he now felt assailing him from every side.

He knew he should try to call Signora Moro, willed himself to reach for

the phone, but he could not do it. Who was it whose gaze could turn

people to stone? The Basilisk? Medusa? With serpents for hair and an

open, glaring mouth. He conjured up an image of the tangled, swirling

locks, but could not remember who had painted or sculpted them.

His departure from the Questura had the feel of flight about it, at

least to Brunetti. His chair remained pushed back from his desk, his

door open, the papers set neatly at the centre of his desk, while he

fled the place and went home in a state not far from panic.

His nose brought him back to his senses. As he opened the door to the

apartment he was greeted by aromas from the kitchen: something

roasting, perhaps pork; and garlic, so pervasive it suggested that an

entire field of garlic had been seized and tossed into the oven along

with the pork.

He hung up his jacket, remembered that he had left his briefcase in his

office and shrugged off the thought. He paused at the door to the

kitchen, hoping to find his family already seated at the table, but the

room was empty, except for the garlic, the odour of which seemed to be

coming from a tall pot boiling over a low flame.

Devoting his entire attention to the smell, he attempted to remember

where he had smelled it before. He knew it was familiar, as a melody

is familiar even when a person cannot remember the piece from which it

comes. He tried to separate the scents: garlic, tomato, a touch of

rosemary, something fishy like clams or shrimp probably shrimp and,

perhaps, carrots. And the garlic, a universe of garlic. He summoned

up the sensation he had experienced in the office, of his spirit being

steeped in misery. He breathed deeply, hoping that the

garlic would drive the misery out. If it could drive away vampires,

then surely it could work its herbal magic against something as banal

as misery. He stood propped against the jamb, his eyes closed,

inhaling the scents, until a voice behind him said, "That is not the

proud stance of a defender of justice and the rights of the

oppressed."

Paola appeared beside him, kissed his cheek without really looking at

him, and slipped past him into the kitchen.

"Is that Guglielmo's soup?"

"The very same," Paola said, lifting the lid from the pot and taking a

long wooden spoon from the counter to stir at the contents. Twelve

heads of garlic," she whispered, her voice filled with something that

approached awe.

"And we've survived it every time," Brunetti added.

"Proof of divine intervention, I think," Paola suggested.

"And, if Guglielmo is to be believed, a sure cure for worms and high

blood pressure."

"And an even surer way to get yourself a seat on the vaporetto

tomorrow."

Brunetti laughed, feeling his tension begin to evaporate. He

remembered their friend Guglielmo, who had served as military attache

in Cairo for four years, during which time he had studied Arabic,

converted to Coptic Christianity, and made a fortune smuggling

archaeological artefacts out of the country on military aeroplanes.

Devoted to food, he had taken with him, when he left, a broad variety

of recipes, most of which called for inordinate quantities of garlic.

"Is it true that they've found dried-up garlic in mummy coffins?"

Brunetti asked, pushing himself away from the door.

"You'd probably find it in the pockets of Guglielmo's dress uniform,

too," Paola observed, replacing the lid and taking her first good look

at her husband. Her voice changed. "What's the matter with you?"

He tried to smile but failed. "Bad day."

"What?"

"A suicide that might not be."

"Who?"

"A boy."

"How old?"

"Seventeen."

The death, the gender and the age stopped Paola in her tracks. She

took a deep breath, shook her head as if to dismiss superstitious

possibility, and put her hand on his arm. "Tell me about it."

For a reason he didn't understand, perhaps the same superstition,

Brunetti didn't want to have to look at Paola as he told her about

Ernesto Moro, so he busied himself with taking down two glasses and

getting a chilled bottle of Tocai out of the refrigerator. As he went

through the business of opening the bottle, he spoke, deliberately

slowing his actions so that they would last as long as the explanation

he had to give. "He was a student at the San Martino. We had a call

this morning, and when we got there, we found him hanging in the

shower. Vianello did, that is."

He poured two glasses of wine and handed one to Paola, who ignored it

and asked, "Who was he?"

"Fernando Moro's son."

"Dottor Moro?"

"Yes," Brunetti said and pressed the glass into her hand until she

accepted it.

"Does he know?"

Brunetti turned away from her, set his glass down, and opened the

refrigerator, searching for something he could eat by way of

distraction. His back to her, he went on, "Yes."

She said nothing while he rooted around and found a plastic container

of olives, which he opened and placed on the counter. As soon as he

saw them, dark and plump in their yellow oil, he lost the taste for

them and picked up his glass again. Conscious of Paola's attention, he

glanced at her.

"Did you have to tell him?"

"He came while I was there with the boy's body, then I went and talked

to him at his home."

Today?" she asked, unable to disguise what was either astonishment or

horror.

"I wasn't there long he said and regretted the words the instant they

were out of his mouth.

Paola shot him a look, but what she saw on his face made her let his

remark pass without comment. The mother?" she asked.

"I don't know where she is. Someone said she was here, in the city,

but I couldn't call her." Perhaps it was the way he said 'couldn't'

that caused Paola not to question him about this, either.

Instead, she asked, "What makes you think it might not be?"

"Habit," he ventured.

The habit of doubt?" she asked. "I suppose you could call it that,"

Brunetti answered and finally allowed himself a sip of wine. Cool,

tight on his tongue, it gave him little comfort, though it reminded him

that comfort did exist in the world.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Paola asked, sipping for the first

time at her own wine.

"Later, perhaps. After dinner."

She nodded, took another sip, and set the glass down. "If you want to

go and read for a while, I'll set the table. The kids should be home

soon she began, and both of them were conscious of the word 'kids' and

the casual assertion it made that things had at least remained the same

for them, their family safe. Like a horse suddenly breaking stride to

avoid a hole below its front foot, her voice jogged over into

artificial jollity and she added, "And then we'll eat."

Brunetti went into the living room. He placed his glass on the table,

sat on the sofa, and picked up his book, Anna Comnena's life of her

father, the Emperor Alexius. Half an

hour later, when Chiara came in to tell her father that dinner was

ready, she found him on the sofa, his book lying open and forgotten in

his lap, as he stared out at the rooftops of the city.

Much as Brunetti hoped that talking to Paola about the boy's death

would serve to lessen the horror with which it filled him, it did not.

In bed, Paola curled beside him, he told her the events of his day,

struck by the grotesqueness of their bedtime talk. When he finished,

not hiding from her the anguish that had caused him to flee from-his

office without trying to contact Signora Moro, she propped herself up

on one elbow and looked down at his face.

"How much longer can you do this, Guido?" she asked.

In the dim moonlight, he glanced at her, then returned his attention to

the opposite wall, where the mirror glowed dimly in the light reflected

from the tiles of the terrace.

She allowed a certain time to pass in silence, and then asked,

"Well?"

"I don't know," he answered. "I can't think about that until this is

finished."

"If it's decided he committed suicide, then isn't it already finished?"

she asked.

The don't mean finished that way he said dismissively. "I mean really

finished."

"Finished for you, you mean?" she asked. At other times, the words

would have been a demand, perhaps even a sarcastic observation, but

tonight they were only a request for information.

"I suppose so," he admitted.

"When will that be?"

The accumulated exhaustion of the day enveloped him, almost as if it

had decided to wrap its arms around him and lull him to sleep. He felt

his eyes close and he rested in those other arms for a moment. The

room began to move away from him as he felt himself drawn towards

sleep. Suddenly able to see the events affecting the Moro family only

as a triangle created by coincidence, he whispered, "When the lines

aren't there," and gave himself to sleep.

The next morning, he woke to ignorance. The rays of the sun, reflected

off the same mirror and on to his face, pulled him from sleep, and in

the first moments of waking, he had no memory of the events of the

previous day. He moved a bit to the right and his body sensed Paola's

absence; he turned his head to the left and saw the bell tower of San

Polo, the sunlight so clear upon it that he could make out the grey

blobs of cement that held the bricks together. A pigeon glided toward

the eaves under the tower roof, spread its wings to reduce speed, and

then set itself down in a soft-footed landing. It turned around twice,

bobbed about a bit, and then tucked its head under one wing.

Nothing the bird did was reminiscent of the events of the previous day,

but as its head disappeared under its wing, Brunetti had a sharp vision

of Ernesto Moro's face at the moment that Vianello pulled the hem of

his cape across it.

Brunetti got out of bed and, careful to avoid himself in the mirror,

went down to the bathroom to take a shower. As he stood there,

shaving, he had no choice but to confront his

own eyes, and the face he saw looking back at him had the weary

dullness of every grief-stricken parent he had ever had to speak to.

How to explain that a child was dead, and even if it could be

explained, what explanation could hope to stem the torrent of grief

that must flow from those words?

Paola and the children were long gone, so he left the house, glad of

the chance to drink his coffee in the company of a familiar

pasticceria, with conversation no more demanding than the idle comments

someone might make to him. He bought both // Tempo and II Gazzettino

at the edicola in Campo Santa Marina and went into Didovich for a

coffee and a brioche.

CADET AT EXCLUSIVE VENETIAN SCHOOL HANGS HIMSELF, the first paper

declared on one of the inner pages, while the front page of the second

carried the headline, son of ex parliamentarian FOUND DEAD AT SAN

MARTINO. The loWCr case headlines informed the people of Venice that

the father of the victim had resigned from Parliament after his hotly

contested health report had been condemned by the then Minister of

Health, that the police were investigating the boy's death, and that

his parents were separated. Reading the lead paragraphs, Brunetti was

sure that anyone who read them, regardless of the information contained

in the article that followed, would already suspect that the parents or

the way they lived was somehow related to, if not directly responsible

for, the boy's death.

Terrible, isn't it? This boy?" one of the women at the counter asked

the owner, waving her hand towards Brunetti's newspaper. She bit into

her brioche and shook her head.

"What's the matter with kids today? They have so much. Why can't they

be content with it?" another one answered.

As if on cue, a third woman the same age as the other two, her hair the

standard post-menopausal red, set her coffee cup resoundingly back into

its saucer and said, "It's because the

parents don't pay attention to them. I stayed home to take care of my

children, and so nothing like this ever happened." A stranger to this

culture might well assume that no option was open to the children of

working mothers but suicide. The three women nodded in united

disapproval at this latest proof of the perfidy and ingratitude of

youth and the irresponsibility of all parents other than themselves.

Brunetti folded his paper, paid, and left the pasticceria. The same

headlines blared forth from the yellow posters taped to the back wall

of the edicola. In their real grief, attacks like this could do no

more than glance off the souls of the Moros: this belief was the only

comfort Brunetti could find in the face of this latest evidence of the

mendacity of the press.

Inside the Questura, he went directly to his office, where he saw new

files lying on his desk. He dialled Signorina Elettra, who answered

the phone by saying, "He wants to see you immediately."

It no longer surprised him when Signorina Elettra knew that it was he

who was calling: she had spent considerable police funds in having

Telecom install a new phone line in her office, though the moneys

currently available could not provide for anyone except her to have a

terminal on which the number of the caller appeared. Nor was he

surprised by her use of the pronoun: she granted this distinction only

to her immediate superior, Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta.

"Immediately now?" he asked.

"Immediately yesterday afternoon, I'd say," she answered.

Brunetti went downstairs and into her office without taking time to

examine the folders. He had expected to find Signorina Elettra at her

desk, but her office was empty. He stuck his head back outside the

door to check to see if she were in the hallway, but there was no sign

of her.

Reluctant to present himself to Patta without first having some

indication of his superior's mood or what it was Patta wanted to see

him about, Brunetti toyed with the idea of

going back to his office to read the folders or to the officers' room

to see if Vianello or Pucetti were there. As he stood undecided, the

door to Vice-Questore Patta's office opened, and Signora Elettra

emerged, today wearing what looked very much like a bomber jacket,

buttoned tight at the waist, puffy and full over the bust and

shoulders; well, a bomber jacket, were bombardiers given to the wearing

of uniforms made of apricot-coloured raw silk.

Patta had a clear view from his office into hers. "I'd like to see

you, Brunetti," he called. Brunetti glanced at Signorina Elettra as he

turned toward Patta's door, but the only thing she had time to do was

push her lips tightly together in either disapproval or disgust. Like

ships in the night, they passed, barely acknowledging the presence of

the other.

"Close the door," Patta said, glancing up and then back at the papers

on his desk. Brunetti turned to do so, certain that Patta's use of the

word 'please' would provide the clue to what sort of meeting this would

be. The fact that Brunetti had time to formulate this thought

destroyed any possibility that it was going to be a pleasant

interchange of ideas between colleagues. A short delay would be the

habitual flick of the whip from a carriage driver: aimed to snap the

air and catch the beast's attention without doing it any harm, it was

an unconscious assertion of command, not meant to inflict damage. A

longer delay would demonstrate Patta's irritation without revealing its

cause. The complete absence of the word, as on this occasion, was

indicative of either fear or rage: experience had taught Brunetti that

the first of these was the more dangerous, for fear drove Patta to the

reckless endangerment of other people's careers in his attempt to

protect his own. This evaluation was complete long before Brunetti

turned to approach his superior, and so the sight of a glowering Patta

did not intimidate him.

"Yes, sir?" he asked with a serious face, having learned that

neutrality of expression and tone was expected of him in

these moments. He waited for Patta to wave him to a chair, consciously

imitating the behaviour of a non-Alpha male dog.

"What are you waiting for?" Patta demanded, still without looking at

him. "Sit down."

Brunetti did so silently and placed his arms in neat horizontals on the

arms of the chair. He waited, wondering what scene Patta was going to

play and how he was going to play it. A minute passed silently. Patta

continued to read through the file that lay open before him,

occasionally turning a page.

Like most Italians, Brunetti respected and approved of beauty. When he

could, he chose to surround himself with beauty: his wife, the clothes

he wore, the paintings in his home, even the beauty of thought in the

books he read: all of these things gave him great pleasure. How, he

wondered, as he did whenever he encountered Patta after a gap of a week

or so, how could a man so very handsome be so utterly devoid of the

qualities usually attributed to beauty? The erect posture was solely

physical, for the ethical Patta was an eel; the firm jaw bespoke a

strength of character that was manifested only in stubbornness; and the

clear dark eyes saw only what they chose to see.

Caught in this reflection, Brunetti didn't notice when Patta finally

turned his attention to him, nor did he hear the Vice Questore's first

words, tuning in only toward the end '... your mistreatment of his

students'.

Like a scholar piecing together a coherent meaning from a fragment of

text, Brunetti realized that the students must be those at the San

Martino Academy, and the only person capable of using the possessive

pronoun when speaking of them the Comandante.

"I chanced into the room of one of them, and we discussed his class

work. I don't think this can be construed in any way as mistreatment,

sir."

"Not only you Patta said, overriding Brunetti and giving no indication

that he had bothered to listen to his explanation. "One of your

officers. I was at a dinner last night, and the father of one of the

boys said your officer was very rough when he questioned his son."

Patta allowed the full horror of this to sink in before adding, The

father was at school with General D'Ambrosio."

"I'm sorry, sir Brunetti said, wondering if the boy would go on to

complain to his father should he experience rough treatment from the

enemy in battle, "I'm sure if he had known that, he would have shown

him more courtesy

"Don't try being smart with me, Brunetti/ Patta shot back, displaying a

quicker sensitivity to Brunetti's tone than usual. "I don't want your

men in there, strong-arming these boys and causing trouble. These are

the sons of some of the best people in the country and I won't have

them treated like this."

Brunetti had always been fascinated by the way the police shuttlecocked

back and forth between Patta and all the others who might be seen as

responsible for them: when they solved a case or behaved bravely, they

were Patta's police, but all cases of mis behaviour incompetence or

negligence were clearly attributable to their behaving like the police

of someone else, in this case, Brunetti.

"I'm not sure there's any question of their being mistreated, sir

Brunetti said mildly. "I asked an officer to speak to the other

students and try to find out if the Moro boy had been behaving

strangely or if he had said anything that would indicate he had been

thinking about suicide." Before Patta could interrupt, he went on, "I

thought this would help make it even clearer that the boy had committed

suicide."

"Clearer than what?" Patta asked.

Than the physical evidence, sir Brunetti answered.

For a moment, he thought that Patta was about to say, "Good." Surely

his face grew less tense and he, too, let out a deep breath. But all

he said was, "Very well. Then let's file it

as suicide and let the school begin to get back to normal."

"Good idea, sir said Brunetti, then, as if the idea had just occurred

to him, "But what do we do if the boy's parents aren't satisfied?"

"What do you mean, "aren't satisfied?"

"Well, the father has a history of causing trouble," Brunetti began,

shaking his head as if thinking of the shocking scepticism towards

public institutions demonstrated in the Moro Report. "And so I

wouldn't want to be responsible for a report about his son's death that

left anything open to question."

"Do you think there's a chance of that?"

"Probably not, sir," Brunetti answered. "But I wouldn't want to leave

something undone that a person as difficult as Moro could point to and

ask questions about. He'd be sure to make it look bad for us. And

he's certainly a person who gets his fair share of public attention."

Brunetti stopped himself from saying more.

Patta gave all of this some thought and finally asked, "What do you

suggest?"

Brunetti feigned surprise that he should be asked such a thing. He

started to speak, stopped, and then went on, giving every evidence that

he'd never considered this possibility. "I suppose I'd try to find out

whether he took drugs or showed signs of depression."

Patta appeared to consider all of this and then said, "It would be

easier for them to bear it if they were certain, I suppose."

"Who, sir?"

"His parents."

Brunetti risked a question. "Do you know them?"

The father, yes," Patta said.

Because this was still not followed by an attack on the man, Brunetti

dared to ask, Then do you think we should go ahead like this, sir?"

Patta sat up straighter and moved a heavy Byzantine coin he used as a

paperweight from one side of his desk to the other. "If it doesn't

take too much time, all right." How typically Patta was this answer:

having commissioned the investigation, he had simultaneously assured

that any delay would be laid at the feet of someone else.

"Yes, sir," Brunetti said and got to his feet. Patta turned his

attention to a thin file on his desk and Brunetti let himself out.

In the small outer office, he found Signorina Elettra at her desk, head

bent over what appeared to be a catalogue. He looked closer and saw a

double-page spread of computer screens.

She glanced up and smiled.

"Didn't you just buy one of those?" he asked, pointing to the screen

to her right.

"Yes, but they've just come out with new ones, perfectly flat screens,

as thin as a pizza. Look," she said, pointing a scarlet fingernail at

one of the photos in the catalogue. Though he found her simile

surreal, he had to agree it seemed accurate enough.

He read the first two lines of print and, seeing too many numbers and

initials, to make no mention of a word he thought was 'gigabytes' he

sped to the bottom where the price was given. That's a month's

salary," he said, in astonishment, aware that there was more than a

little disapproval in his tone.

"Closer to two," she added, 'if you get the larger LCD screen."

"Are you really going to order it?" he asked.

"I've no choice, I'm afraid."

"Why?"

"I've already promised this one she began, indicating her all-but-new

computer screen as though it were a bag of old clothing she was asking

the cleaning lady to dispose of, 'to Vianello."

Brunetti decided to let it go. There seems to be some connection

between the Vice-Questore and Dottor Moro/ he began. "Do you think you

could find out more about that?"

She had returned her attention to the catalogue. "Nothing easier, sir

she said, and turned a page.

Venice, like every other city in the country, was feeling the

consequences of the government's refusal to adopt an immigration policy

that was related in any sane way to the realities of immigration. Among

the consequences which did not affect Brunetti directly were the

thousands of illegal immigrants who profited from the easygoing Italian

policy and who then, in possession of Italian documents legitimizing

their presence on the continent, passed to northern countries where

they would be able to work with some protection under the law. There

was also the resulting irritation on the part of other governments at

the ease with which the Italians washed their hands of the problem by

passing it on to them.

Venice, and Brunetti, had begun to feel the consequences in their own

way: the number of pickpocketings had skyrocketed; shoplifting was a

problem for even the smallest merchants; and no householder any longer

felt that his home was safe from robbery. Since most of these cases

passed through the Questura, Brunetti registered the increase, but he

felt it lightly, as a person with a mild cold might discover that ins

temperature has increased a degree or two without feeling any real

symptoms. If this increase in petty crime produced any symptoms for

Brunetti himself, it was in the amount of paperwork he was obliged to

initial and, presumably, read.

It was a period in which there was very little violent crime in the

houses or on the streets of Venice, and so Patta, no doubt feeling

withdrawal symptoms after his name had not appeared in the Gazzettino

for more than a week, ordered Brunetti, and requested Signorina

Elettra, to prepare a report providing statistics which would show the

high clear-up rate of the Venetian police. The report, he stipulated,

was to show that the perpetrators of most crimes were found and

arrested and that, during the last year, there had been a consequent

decrease in crime within the city.

"But that's nonsense," Brunetti said, when Signorina Elettra informed

him of their task.

"No more nonsensical than any other statistic we're provided with she

said.

His patience short because of the time he knew he'd waste in preparing

this report, he asked curtly, "Like what?"

"Like the statistics about road fatalities," she said, smiling, patient

in the face of his annoyance.

"What about them?" he asked, not really interested, yet doubtful that

anything so well documented could be altered.

"If you die a week or more after you're injured in an accident, you

didn't die because of the accident," she said, almost with pride. "At

least, not statistically."

"Does that mean the hospitals kill you?" he asked, aiming towards

irony.

"That's certainly often enough the case, sir," she said with every

appearance of patience. "I'm not sure just how they list these deaths,

but they aren't counted as traffic fatalities."

Not for an instant did it occur to Brunetti to doubt her. Her

idea, however, sent his mind tumbling back to the report they had to

prepare. "Do you think we could use this technique ourselves?"

"You mean, if someone who is murdered takes a week to die, they weren't

murdered?" she asked. "Or if a theft is reported after more than a

week, then nothing was stolen?" He nodded, and Signorina Elettra

devoted herself to considering the possibility. Finally she answered,

"I'm sure the Vice-Questore would be delighted, though I'm afraid there

would be certain difficulties if we were questioned about it."

He drew his imagination away from these angel flights of mathematics

and back to the grim truth of the report they had to write. "Do you

think we can do it and get the results he wants?"

Her voice grew serious. "I think what he wants won't be hard to give

him. All we have to do is exercise caution about the number of crimes

reported."

"What does that mean?"

"That we count only those where people came down here or went to the

Carabinieri to fill out a formal den uncia

"What will that achieve?"

"I've told you before, Commissario. People don't bother to report

crimes, least of all pick-pocketing or burglary. So when they phone to

report it but then don't bother to come down here to fill out the

papers, the crime hasn't been reported." She paused for a moment,

allowing Brunetti, who knew just how Jesuitical her reasoning could be,

to prepare himself for the consequences towards which this must lead

her. "And if there is no official den uncia which, in a certain sense,

means the act never occurred then I see no reason why we should have to

include them in our calculations."

"What percentage would you estimate people don't bother to report?" he

asked.

"I have no way of knowing, sir," she said. "After all, it's

philosophically impossible to prove a negative." There

followed another pause, and then she said, "I'd guess a bit more than

half."

"Are or aren't reported?" a surprised Brunetti asked.

"Aren't."

This time it was Brunetti who paused for a long time before he said,

That's very lucky for us, isn't it?"

"Indeed," was her response, then she asked, "Would you like me to take

care of it, sir? He wants it for the newspapers, and they want to be

able to say that Venice is a happy island, virtually free from crime,

so no one is likely to question my numbers or my accounting."

"It is, though, isn't it?" he asked.

"What, a happy island?"

"Yes."

"In comparison with the rest of the country, yes, I think so."

"How long do you think it will stay like that?"

Signorina Elettra shrugged. As Brunetti was turning to leave her

office, she opened her desk drawer and took a few sheets of paper from

it. "I didn't forget about Dottor Moro, sir," she said as she handed

it to him.

He thanked her and left her office. As he walked up the stairs, he saw

that it explained the reason for Patta's familiarity with Dr. Fernando

Moro. There was nothing unusual: Signora Patta's mother had been a

patient of Moro's since he had returned to the practice of medicine.

Signorina Elettra had not managed to provide copies of her medical

records, but she had supplied the dates of her visits to Dottor Moro,

twenty-seven in all during the last two years. At the bottom,

Signorina Elettra had added, in her own hand: "Breast cancer." He

checked the date of the last appointment: little more than two months

ago.

As with any superior, Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta was often the

subject of speculation among those under his command. His motives for

action or inertia were usually transparent: power, its maintenance and

aggrandizement. In

9i the past, however, he had proven capable of great weakness, had even

been deflected from his headlong pursuit of power, but only when he

acted in defence of his family. Brunetti, though often suspicious of

Patta and usually deeply contemptuous of his motives, felt nothing but

respect for this weakness.

Brunetti had told himself that decency demanded he wait at least two

days before attempting to speak again to either of the boy's parents.

That time had passed, and he arrived at the Questura that morning with

the intention of interviewing one or both of them. Dottor Moro's home

phone was answered by a machine. The phone at his practice said that,

until further notice, the doctor's patients would be seen by Doctor D.

Biasi, whose office hours and phone number were given. Brunetti re

dialled the first number and left his name and his direct number at the

Questura, requesting that the doctor call him.

That left the mother. Signorina Elettra had provided a brief

biography. Venetian, like her husband, she had met Moro in liceo, then

both had gone on to the University of Padova, where Moro opted for

medicine, Federica for child psychology. They married when her studies

were completed but didn't return to Venice until Moro was offered a

place at the Ospedale Civile, when she had opened a private practice in

the city.

Their legal separation, which took place with unseemly haste after her

accident, had been a surprise to their friends. They had not divorced,

and neither appeared to be involved with another person. There was no

evidence that they had contact with one another, and any communication

they had seemed to take place through their lawyers.

Signorina Elettra had clipped the article about Ernesto's death that

had appeared in La Nuova to the outside of the folder. He chose not to

read it, though he did read the caption under the photo of the family,

'in happier times'.

Federica Moro's smile was the centre of the photo: she stood with her

right arm wrapped around the back of her husband, her head leaning on

his chest, her other hand ruffling her son's hair. The photo showed

them on a beach, in shorts and T-shirts, tanned and bursting with

happiness and health; behind them the head of a swimmer bobbed just to

her husband's right. The picture must have been taken years ago, for

Ernesto was still a boy, not a young man. Federica looked away from

the camera, and the other two looked at her, Ernesto's glance open and

proud, as who would not be proud to have such an attractive woman as a

mother? Fernando's look was calmer, yet no less proud.

One of them, Brunetti thought, must just have said something funny, or

perhaps they'd seen something on the beach that made them laugh. Or

was it the photographer, perhaps, who had been the clown of the moment?

Brunetti was struck by the fact that, of the three of them, Federica

had the shortest hair: boyish, only a few centimetres long. It stood

in sharp contrast to the fullness of her body and the natural ease with

which she embraced her husband.

Who would dare to publish such a photo, and who could have given it to

the paper, surely knowing how it would be used? He slipped the

clipping free and stuck it inside the folder. The same number Signora

Ferro had given him was written on the outside; he dialled, forgetting

what she had told him about letting it ring once and hanging up.

On the fourth ring, a woman's voice answered, saying only "SIT

"Signora Moro?" Brunetti asked.

"Si."

"Signora, this is Commissario Guido Brunetti. Of the police. I'd be

very grateful if you would find the time to speak to me." He waited

for her to reply, then added, "About your son."

"Aah," she said. Then nothing for a long time.

"Why have you waited?" she finally asked, and he sensed that having to

ask the question made her angry.

"I didn't want to intrude on your grief, Signora." When she was

silent, he added, "I'm sorry."

"Do you have children?" she surprised him by asking.

"Yes, I do."

"How old?"

"I have a daughter he began, then said the rest quickly, "My son is the

same age as yours."

"You didn't say that at the beginning," she said, sounding surprised

that he should have failed to use such an emotive tool.

Unable to think of anything suitable to say, Brunetti asked "May I come

and speak to you, Signora?"

"Any time you want she said, and he had a vision of days, months,

years, an entire lifetime stretching away from her.

"May I come now?" he asked.

"It's all the same, isn't it?" she asked; it was a real request for

information, not a sarcastic or self-pitying pose.

"It should take me about twenty minutes to get there he said.

"I'll be here she replied.

He had located her address on the map and so knew which way to walk. He

could have taken the boat up towards San Marco, but he chose to walk up

the Riva, cutting through the Piazza and in front of the Museo Correr.

He entered Frezzerie and turned left at the first cafe on his left. It

was the second door on the right, the top bell. He rang it, and with

no question asked through the intercom, the door snapped open and he

went in.

The entrance hall was damp and dark, though no canal was nearby. He

climbed to the third floor and found, directly opposite him, an open

door. He paused, called, "Signora Moro?" and heard a voice say

something from inside, so he went in and closed the door behind him. He

went down a

narrow corridor with a cheap machine-made carpet on the floor, towards

what seemed to be a source of light.

A door stood open on his right and he stepped inside. A woman was

sitting in a chair on the other side of the room, and light filtered in

from two curtained windows that stood behind her. The room smelled of

cigarette smoke and, he thought, mothballs.

"Commissario?" she asked, raising her face to look in his direction.

"Yes/ he answered. Thank you for letting me come."

She waved his words away with her right hand, then returned the

cigarette it held to her mouth and inhaled deeply. There's a chair

over there she said, exhaling and pointing to a cane-seated chair that

stood against the wall.

He brought it over and set it facing her, but not very close and a

short distance to one side. He sat and waited for her to say

something. He didn't want to seem to stare at her and so he directed

his attention to the windows, beyond which he saw, just on the other

side of the narrow calle, the windows of another house. Little light

could get in that way. He turned his attention back to her and, even

in this strange penumbra, recognized the woman in the photo. She

looked as though she'd been on a crash diet that had drawn the flesh

tight on her face and honed the bones of her jaw until they were so

sharp that they would soon come slicing through the skin. The same

process seemed to have pared her body down to the bare essentials of

shoulders, arms, and legs contained in a heavy sweater and dark slacks

that accentuated her body's frailty.

It became evident that she was not going to speak, was simply going to

sit with him and smoke her cigarette. "I'd like to ask you some

questions, Signora/ he began, and exploded in a sudden fit of nervous

coughing.

"Is it the cigarette?" she asked, turning to the table on her right

and making to put it out.

He raised a reassuring hand. "No, not at all he gasped but was gripped

by another coughing fit.

She stabbed out the cigarette and got to her feet. He started to get

to his, doubled over by his coughing, but she waved him back and left

the room. Brunetti lowered himself into the chair and continued to

cough, tears streaming from his eyes. In a moment, she was back,

handing him a glass of water. "Drink it slowly," she said. Take small

sips."

Still shaking with the attempt to control himself, he took the glass

with a nod of thanks and put it to his lips. He waited for the spasms

to subside and took a small sip, and then another and another until all

of the water was gone and he could breathe freely again. Occasionally,

puffs of air rushed from his lungs, but the worst was over. He leaned

down and set the glass on the floor. "Thank you," he said.

"It's nothing," she answered, taking her place in the chair opposite

him. He saw her reach instinctively to the right, towards the pack of

cigarettes that lay on the table, and then lower her hand to her lap.

She looked over at him and asked, "Nerves?"

He smiled. "I think so, though I don't think I'm supposed to say

so."

"Why not?" she asked, sounding interested.

"Because I'm the policeman, and we're not supposed to be weak or

nervous."

That's ridiculous, isn't it?"

He nodded, and in that instant recalled that she was a psychologist.

He cleared his throat and asked, "Could we begin again, Signora?"

Her smile was minimal, a ghost of the one on her face in the photo that

still lay on his desk. "I suppose we have to. What is it you'd like

to know?"

"I'd like to ask you about your accident, Signora/

Her confusion was visible, and he could understand its

cause. Her son was recently dead in circumstances that had yet to be

officially determined, and he was asking her about something that had

happened more than two years ago. "Do you mean in Siena?" she finally

asked.

"Yes."

"Why do you want to know about that?"

"Because no one seemed curious about it at the time."

She tilted her head to one side as she considered his answer. "I see

she finally said, then added, "Should they have been?"

That's what I'm hoping to learn, Signora."

Silence settled in between them and Brunetti, having no option, sat and

waited to see if she would tell him what had happened. In the minutes

that passed, she glanced aside at the cigarettes twice, and the second

time he almost told her to go ahead and smoke, that it wouldn't bother

him, but he said nothing. As the silence lengthened, he studied the

few objects he could see in the room: her chair, the table, the

curtains at the window. All spoke of a taste far different from the

casual wealth he had observed in Moro's home. There was no attempt to

suit style to style or do anything more than provide furniture that

would meet the most basic needs.

"I'd gone down to our friends on the Friday morning," she said,

surprising him when she finally began to speak. "Fernando was supposed

to get there on the last train, at about ten that night. It was a

beautiful day, late autumn but still very warm, so I decided to go for

a walk in the afternoon. I was about a half a kilo metre from the

house when I heard a loud noise it could have been a bomb for all I

knew and then I felt a pain in my leg, and I fell down. It wasn't as

if anyone had pushed me or anything: I just fell down."

She glanced across at him, as if to establish whether he could possibly

find any of this interesting. He nodded and she went on. "I lay

there, too stunned to do anything. It didn't even hurt all that much

then. I heard noises from the woods

that I had been walking towards. Well, not really woods, perhaps an

acre or two of trees. I heard something moving around in there and I

wanted to shout for help, but then I didn't. I don't know why, but I

didn't. I just lay there.

"A minute or two must have passed, and then, over from where I'd come

from, two dogs came running toward me, barking their heads off, came

right up to me and started jumping around, barking all the time. I

shouted at them to shut up. My leg had started to hurt then, and when

I looked at it, I realized I'd been shot, so I knew I had to do

something. And then there were these hunting dogs, barking and dancing

around me like crazy things."

She stopped talking for so long that Brunetti was forced to ask, "What

happened then?"

The hunters came. The men whose dogs they were, that is. They saw the

dogs and they saw me on the ground and they thought the dogs had

attacked me, so they came running and when they got to us they started

kicking the dogs away and hitting at them with the ends of their guns,

but the dogs weren't doing anything. They probably saved my life,

those dogs."

She stopped and looked directly at him, as if to ask if he had any

questions, and when he said nothing, she went on, "One of them used his

handkerchief and made a tourniquet, and then they carried me to their

Jeep, which was just at the edge of the woods. And they took me to the

hospital. The doctors there are used to this kind of thing: hunters

are always shooting themselves or other hunters down there, it seems."

She paused and then said softly, "Poor things," in a voice so filled

with real sympathy that he was struck by how vulgar and cheap his

conversation with Signorina Elettra sounded in comparison.

"Did they ask you at the hospital how it happened, Signora?"

The men who found me told them what had happened, so

all I did, when I came out from surgery, was confirm what they'd

said."

That it was an accident?" he asked.

"Yes." She said the word with no special tone.

"Do you think it was?" he asked.

Again, there was a long delay before she spoke. "At the time, I didn't

think it could have been anything else. But since then I've started to

wonder why whoever it was that shot me didn't come to see what they'd

done. If they thought I was some sort of an animal, they would have

come to check that they'd killed me, wouldn't they?"

That was what had troubled Brunetti ever since he'd first heard the

story.

"And when they heard the dogs and then the other hunters, they would

have come to see what all that was about, if they thought someone else

was going to take the animal they'd killed." She let some time pass

and then said, "As I said, I didn't think about any of this at the

time."

"And what do you think now?"

She started to speak, stopped herself, and then said, "I don't mean to

be melodramatic, but I have other things to think about now."

So did Brunetti. He was wondering if a police report had been filed of

the incident, if the two hunters who found her had noticed anyone in

the area.

Brunetti could no longer keep her from her cigarettes, so he said, "I

have only one more question, Signora."

She didn't wait for him to ask it. "No, Ernesto didn't kill himself.

I'm his mother, and I know that to be true. That's another reason why

I think it wasn't an accident." She prised herself from her chair,

said, "If that was your last question ..." and started towards the

door of the room. Her limp was slight, the merest favouring of her

right leg when she walked, and as she wore slacks, he had no idea of

the damage that had been done to her leg.

He let her lead him to the door of the apartment. He thanked her but

didn't offer his hand. Outside, it had grown marginally warmer, and as

it was already after noon, Brunetti decided to go directly home for

lunch with his family.

Brunetti arrived before the children did, so he opted to keep Paola

company while she finished preparing the meal. As she set the table,

he lifted pot lids and opened the oven, comforted to find nothing but

familiar dishes: lentil soup, chicken smothered in red cabbage, and

what looked like radicchio di Treviso.

"Are you bringing all of your detective skills to bear in examining

that chicken?" Paola asked as she set glasses on the table.

"No, not really," he said, closing the oven and standing upright. "My

investigation has to do with the radicchio, Signora, and whether there

are perhaps traces in it of the same pancetta I detected in the lentil

soup."

"A nose as good as that," she said, coming over and placing the tip of

her finger on it, 'could effectively put an end to crime in this city."

She lifted the lid from the soup and stirred it round a bit, then said,