"You're back early."


"I was over near San Marco and so it didn't make any sense to go back,"

he said, taking a sip of mineral water. "I went to


see Signora Moro/ he began, pausing to see if Paola would react. She

did not, so he went on, "I wanted to talk to her about the hunting

accident


"And?" Paola prodded.


"Someone shot at her from the woods near her friends' house, but then

some other hunters came along and took her to the hospital."


"Are you sure they were other hunters?" Paola asked, giving evidence

that her native scepticism had been enhanced by more than two decades

of marriage to a policeman.


"It would seem so he said, leaving it at that.


Knowing how reluctant he would be to mention him, Paola asked, "And the

boy?"


"She said that he didn't kill himself, and that's all she said."


"She's his mother," Paola said. "Believe her."


"It's as simple as that?" Brunetti asked, unable to disguise his own

scepticism.


"Yes, it's as simple as that. If anyone knew what he was capable of,

it's she."


Unwilling to argue the point, he poured himself another glass of water

and wandered over to stand at the window that looked off to the north.

From behind him, Paola asked, "What's she like?"


He thought about the woman, remembered her voice, the eyes that took

little interest in seeing him, the paper-thin skin of her neck.

"Reduced/ he finally said. "She's not a whole person any more." He

thought Paola would ask about this, but she didn't. "All I saw was a

photo of her, taken some years ago, with the boy. And her husband. She

still looks like the same person; I mean, you could recognize her from

the photo, but there's less of her."


"That makes sense Paola said, 'there is less of her."


He had no idea why he thought Paola would have an answer, but he asked

her anyway, "Will that ever go away, the diminishing?"


It was only then that Brunetti realized that his question would force

Paola to think about the death of her own children because the only way

to answer the question was to put herself in the other woman's place.

He regretted asking the question as soon as he had spoken. He had

never had the courage to ask her if she thought about that possibility

and, if so, how often. Though he had always found it absurd that

parents should worry excessively about the safety of their children,

that is, worry in the absence of any real danger, a day did not pass

but he worried about his own. The fact that he knew it to be

ridiculous, especially in a city without cars, in no way reduced his

concern or prevented him from counting out the ways the safety of his

children could be imperilled.


Paola's voice broke into his reverie. "No, I don't think the death of

a child is something a person ever recovers from, not fully."


"Do you think it's worse because she's a mother?" he asked.


She dismissed this with a shake of her head. "No. That's nonsense."

He was grateful that she chose not to give an example to prove that a

father's grief could be as deep.


He turned back from looking at the mountains, and their eyes met. "What

do you think happened?" she asked.


He shook his head, utterly at a loss to make any sense of what had

happened to the Moro family. "All I have is four events: he writes his

report, though nothing much comes of it except that he's punished; he

gets elected to Parliament and then leaves before his term in office is

over; his wife is shot just before he resigns; two years later, his son

is found hanged in the bathroom of his school."


"Does the school mean anything?" Paola asked.


"Mean anything in what way? That it's a military academy?"


That's the only thing that's unusual about it, isn't it?" she asked.

That and the fact that they spend the winter walking


around the city looking like penguins. And the rest of the year

looking like they have a bad smell under their noses." This was

Paola's usual description of snobs and their behaviour. As she had

been born to a conte and conte ssa and had spent her youth surrounded

by wealth and titles and the hangers-on who are drawn to both, he

figured she'd seen her fair share of snobs.


"I always heard it had a good academic record he said.


"Bah/ she exploded, erasing that possibility from the air with a puff

of breath.


"I'm not sure that serves as a conclusive counter argument he said.

"Articulate and well-reasoned as it is."


Paola turned to face him and put her hands on her hips, looking like an

actress trying out for the role of Angry Woman. "My counter-argument

might not be conclusive she said, 1?ut I shall do my best to make it

articulate."


"Oh, I love it when you're angry like that, Signora Paola/ he said in a

voice he forced up to its highest register. Her hands fell to her

sides and she laughed. "Tell me he said, reaching for the bottle of

Pinot Noir that stood on the counter.


"Susanna Arid/ she said, 'used to teach there, right after she came

back from Rome and was waiting-for a job at a state school. She

thought that by taking the job she was offered at the Academy, even

though it was only part time, she'd at least have entered the state

system." At Brunetti's questioning glance, she explained, "She thought

it was run by the Army, which would make it a state school. But it's

entirely private, not attached to the Army in any official way, though

it seems it somehow manages to receive quite a bit of state funding. So

all she had was a badly paid part-time job. And then when the

permanent position came up, they didn't give her the job, anyway."


"What did she teach, English?" Brunetti had met Susanna a number of

times. The youngest sister of a classmate of Paola's, she had gone to

Urbino to study, then come back to


Venice to teach, where she still was, happily divorced and living with

the father of her second daughter.


"Yes, but for only one year."


This had been almost ten years ago, so Brunetti asked, "Couldn't things

have changed since then?"


"I don't see why anything should have. Certainly, the public schools

have done nothing but get worse, though I imagine the students have

remained pretty much the same: I don't see why things in private

schools should be any different."


Brunetti pulled out his chair and sat. "All right. What did she

say?"


That most of their parents were terrible snobs and that they passed

this feeling of superiority on to their sons. To their daughters as

well, for all I know, but as the Academy takes only boys..." Paola's

voice trailed off, and for a moment Brunetti wondered if she were going

to use this opportunity to launch into a denunciation of single-sex

schools that received funds from the state.


She came and stood near him, took his glass of wine and sipped at it,

then handed it back to him. "Don't worry. Only one sermon at a time,

my dear." Brunetti, unwilling to encourage her, stifled a smile.


"What else did she say?" he asked.


That they felt entitled to everything they had or their parents had and

that they believed themselves to be members of a special group."


"Doesn't everyone?" Brunetti asked.


"In this case Paola went on, 'it was more a case that they felt

themselves bound only to the group, to its rules and decisions."


"Isn't that what I just said?" Brunetti asked. "Certainly we police

feel that way. Well, some do."


"Yes, I suppose so. But you still feel bound by the laws that govern

the rest of us, don't you?"


"Yes/ Brunetti agreed, but then his conscience, and indeed his

intelligence, forced him to add, "Some of us."


"Well, what Susanna said was that these boys didn't. That is, they

thought that the only rules that governed them were the rules of the

military. So long as they obeyed them and remained loyal to that

group, they believed they could pretty much do anything else they

wanted."


Paola studied him as she spoke, and when she saw the attention he gave

to what she said, she went on, "What's more, she said that the

teachers, most of whom had a military background, did everything they

could to encourage the students to think like this. They told them to

think of themselves as soldiers first and foremost." And then she

smiled, though grimly. "Just think of the pathos of it: they aren't

soldiers, aren't associated with the military in any real way, yet

they're being taught to think of themselves as warriors, loyal only to

the cult of violence. It's disgusting."


Something that had been nibbling at the edge of his memory finally

broke through. "Was she there when that girl was raped?" he asked.


"No, I think that was a year or two after she left. Why?"


"I'm trying to remember the story. The girl was the sister of one of

them, wasn't she?"


"Yes, or a cousin," Paola said, then shook her head as if that would

better summon the memory. "All I remember is that the police were

called to the school and at first it looked as if the girl had been

raped. But then it dropped out of the papers like a stone."


"It's strange, but I don't have a clear memory of it, just that it

happened, but none of the details are clear."


The think it happened when you were in London on that course," Paola

suggested. "I remember thinking, at the time, that I had no way of

knowing what really happened because you weren't here to tell me, and

the only source of information I had was the newspapers."


"Yes, that must be it," he agreed. "I'm sure there's something in the

files; there's got to be, at least the original report."


"Could you find it?"


"I'm sure Signorina Elettra could."


"But why bother?" Paola suddenly countered. "There's no surprise

here: rich boys, rich parents, so everything goes suddenly quiet and,

next thing you know, it's disappeared from the press and, for all I

know, from the public record."


"I can still ask her to have a look Brunetti said. Then he asked,

"What else did Susanna say?"


That she never felt comfortable there. She said there was always an

undercurrent of resentment at the fact that she was a woman."


"No way she could change that, is there?" Brunetti asked.


They did the next best thing when they hired her replacement Paola

said.


"Let me guess. A man?"


"Very much so."


Speaking carefully, always conscious of when he was about to stumble

over one of Paola's hobby-horses, he asked, "It couldn't be a bit of

reverse sexism I'm detecting here, could it?"


Paola's look was fierce, but then it disappeared, replaced by a

tolerant smile. "According to Susanna, he spoke English about as well

as the average Parisian taxi driver, but he'd been to the Naval Academy

in Livorno, so it didn't matter how well he spoke it. For that fact,

it probably didn't matter if he spoke it at all. You know the place is

just a finishing school for those boys before they step into their

fathers' shoes in the Army or into whatever businesses they run, and

it's not as if the Army's an institution that makes serious

intellectual demands on anyone." Before Brunetti could question this,

Paola said, "But, yes, it might be that she exaggerated. Susanna does

tend to see sexism where it doesn't exist."


When he got his breath back, Brunetti asked, "You remember her saying

all of this at the time?"


"Of course. I was one of the people who recommended her for the job,

so when they let her go, she told me. Why do you ask?"


"I wondered if you've talked to her since this happened."


"You mean the boy?"


"Yes."


"No, we haven't spoken in, oh, at least six months. But I remember it,

probably because it confirms everything I've ever thought about the

military. They have the morals of pit vipers. They'll do anything to

cover up for one another: lie, cheat, commit perjury. Just look what

happened when those Americans flew into the cable car. You think any

of them told the truth? I haven't noticed any of them going to jail.

How many people did they kill? Twenty? Thirty?" She made a noise of

disgust, poured herself a small glass of wine, but left it untouched on

the counter as she went on. They'll do anything they want to anyone

who isn't a member of the group, and the instant the public begins to

ask questions, they all clam up and talk about honour and loyalty and

all that other noble shit. It's enough to make a' pig vomit." She

stopped talking and closed her eyes, then opened them enough to see her

glass of wine and pick it up. She took a small sip, and then a larger

one. Suddenly she smiled. "End of sermon."


Brunetti had, in his youth, done eighteen months of undistinguished

military service, most of it spent hiking in the mountains with his

fellow Alpini. His memories, and he admitted that they had acquired

the golden patina of age, were chiefly of a sense of unity and

belonging entirely different from those his family had given him. As

he cast his mind back, the image that came through with greatest

clarity was of a dinner of cheese, bread and salami, eaten in company

with four other boys in a freezing mountain hut in


Alto Adige, after which they had drunk two bottles of grappa and sung

marching songs. He had never told Paola about this evening, not

because he was ashamed of how drunk they had all got, but because the

memory could still fill him with such simple joy. He had no idea where

the other boys men now had gone or what they had done after finishing

their military service, but he knew that some sort of bond had been

forged in the cold of that mountain hut and that he would never

experience anything like it again.


He pulled his mind back to the present and to his wife. "You've always

hated the military, haven't you?"


Her response was instant. "Give me one reason not to."


Certain that she would dismiss his memory as the worst sort of male

bonding ritual, Brunetti found himself with precious little to say.

"Discipline?" he asked.


"Have you ever ridden on a train with a bunch of them?" Paola asked,

then repeated his answer with a little puff of contempt.

"Discipline?"


"It gets them away from their mothers."


She laughed. That's perhaps the only certain good thing it does.

Unfortunately, after they have their eighteen months, they all come

back home to roost."


"Is that what you think Raffi will do?" he asked.


"If I have any say," she began, causing Brunetti to wonder when she had

not, 'he won't do military service. It would be better for him to go

to Australia and spend eighteen months hitchhiking around the country

and working as a dishwasher. He'd certainly learn more by doing that,

or by opting to do his service as a volunteer in a hospital,

instead."


"You'd actually let him go off to Australia by himself? For eighteen

months? To wash dishes?"


Paola looked at him and, at the expression of real astonishment she

read on his face, she smiled. "What do you think I am, Guido, the

mother of the Gracchi, that I must forever hold my children to my bosom

as though they were


my only jewels? Tt wouldn't be easy to see him go, no, not at all, but

I think it would do him a world of good to go off and be independent."

When Brunetti remained silent, she said, "At least it would teach him

how to make his own bed."


"He does that already a literal-minded Brunetti answered.


"I mean in the larger sense," Paola explained. "It would give him some

idea that life is not only this tiny city with its tiny prejudices, and

it might give him some idea that work is what you do if you want

something."


"As opposed to asking your parents?"


"Exactly. Or your grandparents."


It was rare for Brunetti to hear Paola make a criticism, however

veiled, of her parents, and so he was curious to follow this up. "Was

it too easy for you? Growing up, I mean."


"No more than it was too hard for you, my dear."


Not at all sure what she meant by that, Brunetti was about to ask, when

the door to the apartment flew open and Chiara and Raffi catapulted

into the corridor. He and Paola exchanged a glance, and then a smile,

and then it was time to eat.


no


As often happened, Brunetti was immeasurably cheered by having lunch at

home in the company of his family. He was never certain if his

response was different from that of an animal returned to its den:

safe, warmed by the heat of the bodies of its young, slavering over the

fresh kill it had dragged home. Whatever the cause, the experience

gave him fresh heart and sent him back to work feeling restored and

eager to resume the hunt.


The imagery of violence dropped away from him when he entered Signorina

Elettra's office and found her at her desk, head bowed over some papers

on her desk, chin propped in one hand, utterly relaxed and comfortable.

"I'm not interrupting you, am I?" he asked, seeing the seal of the

Ministry of the Interior on the documents and below it the red stripe

indicating that the material it contained was classified.


"No, not at all, Commissario/ she said, casually slipping the papers

inside a file and thus arousing Brunetti's interest.


"Could you do something for me?" he asked, his eyes on


hers; he was careful to avoid lowering them to the label on the front

of the file.


"Of course, sir she said, slipping the file into her top drawer and

pulling a notepad over in front of her. "What is it?" she asked, pen

in hand, smile bright.


"In the files for the Academy, is there anything about a girl who had

been raped?"


Her pen clattered to the desk, and the smile disappeared from her lips.

Her entire body pulled back from him in surprise, but she said

nothing.


"Are you all right, Signorina?" he asked, with concern.


She looked down at the pen, picked it up, made quite a business of

replacing the cap and removing it again, then looked up at him and

smiled. "Of course, sir." She looked at the pad, pulled it closer to

her, and poised her pen over it. "What was her name, sir? And when

did it happen?"


"I don't know," Brunetti began. "That is, I'm not even sure it

happened. It must have been about eight years ago; I think it was when

I was at a police seminar in London. It happened at the San Martino.

The original report was that the girl had been raped, I think by more

than one of them. But then no charges were pressed, and the story

disappeared."


"Then what is it you'd like me to look for, sir?"


"I'm not sure," Brunetti answered. "Any sign of something that might

have happened, who the girl was, why the story disappeared. Anything

at all you can find out about it."


She seemed to be a long time writing all of this down, but he waited

until she was finished. Pen still in her hand, she asked, "If charges

weren't pressed, then it's not likely we'll have anything here, is

it?"


"No, it isn't. But I'm hoping that there might be some report of the

original complaint."


"And if there isn't?"


Brunetti was puzzled to find her so hesitant about


following up an investigation. Then perhaps the newspapers. Once you

have the date, that is he said.


Till have a look at your personnel file, sir, and find the dates when

you were in London/ she said, then looked up from her notebook, face

serene.


"Yes, yes he said, then, lamely, Till be in my office


As he went upstairs, he reconsidered what Paola had said about the

military, trying to figure out why he couldn't bring himself to condemn

them as universally or as strongly as she did. Part of it, he knew,

was because of his own experience under arms, however brief it had

been, and the lingering fondness he felt for that period of unexamined

comradeship. Perhaps it was nothing more elevated than the instinct of

the pack, gathered round the kill, retelling stories of that day's hunt

while great gobbets of fat dripped into the fire. But if memory was to

be trusted, his loyalty had been to his immediate group of friends and

not to some abstract ideal of corps or regiment.


His reading in history had given him many examples of soldiers who died

in proud defence of the regimental flag or while performing remarkable

acts of heroism to save the perceived honour of the group, but these

actions had always seemed wasteful and faintly stupid to Brunetti.

Certainly, reading accounts of the actual events or even the words of

the decorations bestowed, too often posthumously, upon these brave

young men, Brunetti had felt his heart stir in response to the nobility

of their behaviour, but the antiphon of pragmatic good sense had always

rung out in the background, reminding him that, in the end, these were

boys who threw their lives away in order to protect what was nothing

more than a piece of cloth. Bold, certainly, and brave, but also

foolish to the point of idiocy.


He found his desk covered with reports of one sort or another, the

detritus of several days' lack of attention. He wrapped himself in the

cloak of duty and, for the next two


hours, engaged himself in behaviour as futile as any he thought to

criticize on the part of those valiant young men. As he read through

accounts of arrests for burglary, pick pocketing, and the various types

of fraud currently practised on the streets of the city, he was struck

by how often the names of the people arrested were foreign and by how

often their age exempted them from punishment. These facts left him

untroubled: it was the thought that each of these arrests guaranteed

another vote for the Right that disturbed him. Years ago, he had read

a short story, he thought by some American, which ended with the

revelation of an endless chain of sinners marching towards heaven along

a broad arc in the sky. He sometimes thought the same chain of sinners

marched slowly through the skies of Italian politics, though hardly

toward paradise.


Stupefied by the boredom of the task, he heard his name called from the

door and looked up to see Pucetti.


"Yes, Pucetti?" he said, beckoning the young officer into his office.

"Have a seat." Glad of the excuse to set the papers aside, he turned

his attention to the young policeman. "What is it?" he asked, struck

by how young he looked in his crisp uniform, far too young to have any

right to carry the gun at his side, far too innocent to have any idea

of how to use it.


"It's about the Moro boy, sir," Pucetti said. "I came to see you

yesterday, sir, but you weren't here."


It was close to a reproach, something Brunetti was not used to hearing

from Pucetti. Resentment flared in Brunetti that the young officer

should dare to take this tone with him. He fought down the impulse to

explain to Pucetti that he had decided there was no need for haste. If

it was generally believed the police were treating Moro's death as

suicide, people might be more willing to speak about the boy openly;

besides, he had no need to justify his decisions to this boy. He

waited longer than he usually would, then asked simply, What about

him?"


"You remember the time we were there, talking to the cadets?" Pucetti

asked, and Brunetti was tempted to ask it the younger man thought he

had arrived at an age where his memory needed to be prodded in order to

function.


"Yes," Brunetti limited himself to saying.


"It's very strange, sir. When we went back to talk to them again, it

was as if some of them didn't even know he had been in the same school

with them. Most of the ones I talked to told me they didn't know him

very well. I spoke to the boy who found him, Pellegrini, but he didn't

know anything. He was drunk the night before, said he went to bed

about midnight." Even before Brunetti could ask, Pucetti supplied the

information: "Yes, he'd been at a party at a friend's house, in

Dorsoduro. I asked him how he'd got in, and he said he had a key to

the port one He said he paid the portiere twenty Euros for it, and the

way he said it, it sounded like anyone who wants one can buy one." He

waited to see if Brunetti had any questions about this, but then

continued, "I asked his roommate, and he said it was true, that

Pellegrini woke him up when he came in. Pellegrini said he got up

about six to get some water and that's when he saw Moro."


"He wasn't the one who called, though, was he?"


"Called us, you mean, sir?"


"Yes."


"No. It was one of the janitors. He said he'd just got there for work

and heard a commotion in the bathroom, and when he saw what had

happened, he called."


"More than an hour after Pellegrini found the body," Brunetti said

aloud.


When Pucetti made no response, Brunetti said, "What else? Go on. What

did they say about Moro?"


"It's in here, sir," he said, placing a file on Brunetti's desk. He

paused, weighing what to say next. "I know this sounds strange, sir,

but it seemed like most of them really didn't care about it. Not the

way we would, or a person would, if


"5


something like this happened to someone you knew, or you worked with."

He gave this some more thought and added, "It was creepy, sort of, the

way they talked as if they didn't know him. But they all live there

together, and take classes together. How could they not know him?"

Hearing his voice rise, Pucetti forced himself to calm down. "Anyway,

one of them told me that he'd had a class with Moro a couple of days

before, and they'd studied together that night and the following day.

Getting ready for an exam."


"When was the exam?"


"The day after."


"The day after what? That he died?"


"Yes, sir."


Brunetti's conclusion was instant, but he asked Pucetti, "How does that

seem to you?"


It was obvious that the young officer had prepared himself for the

question, for his answer was immediate. "People kill themselves, well,

at least it seems to me, that they'd do it after an exam, at least

they'd wait to see how badly they'd done in it, and then maybe they'd

do it. At least that's what I'd do he said, then added, 'not that I'd

kill myself over a stupid exam."


"What would you kill yourself over?" Brunetti asked.


Owl-like, Pucetti stared across at his commander. "Oh, I don't think

over anything, sir. Would you?"


Brunetti shook the idea away. "No, I don't think so. But I suppose

you never know." He had friends who were killing themselves with

stress or cigarettes or alcohol, and some of his friends had children

who were killing themselves with drugs, but he could think of no one he

knew, at least not in this instant, whom he thought capable of suicide.

But perhaps that's why suicide fell like lightning: it was always the

most unexpected people who did it.


His attention swung back to Pucetti only at the end of what he was

saying."... about going skiing this winter."


The Moro boy?" Brunetti asked to disguise the fact that his attention

had drifted away.


"Yes, sir. And this kid said Moro was looking forward to it, really

loved to ski." He paused to see if his superior would comment, but

when he did not, Pucetti went on, "He seemed upset, sir."


"Who? This boy?"


"Yes."


"Why?"


Pucetti gave him a startled glance, puzzled that Brunetti hadn't

figured this out yet. "Because if he didn't kill himself, then someone

else did."


At the look of pleased satisfaction on Brunetti's face as he heard him

explain this, Pucetti began to suspect, not without a twinge of

embarrassment, that perhaps his superior had figured it out.


In the days that followed, Brunetti's thoughts were distracted from the

Moro family and its griefs and directed towards the Casino. The

police, this time, were not asked to investigate the frequent and

refined forms of peculation practised by guests and croupiers, but the

accusations brought against the casino's administration for having

enriched itself at public expense. Brunetti was one of the few

Venetians who bothered to remember that the Casino belonged to the

city; hence he realized that any theft or embezzlement of Casino

earnings came directly from the funds earmarked for the aid of orphans

and widows. That people who spent their lives among gamblers and

card-sharks should steal was no surprise to Brunetti: it was only their

boldness that occasionally astonished him, for it seemed that all of

the ancillary services offered by the Casino banquets, private parties,

even the bars had quietly been turned over to a company that turned out

to be run by the brother of the director.


Since detectives had to be brought in from other cities so as


not to be detected as they presented themselves at the Casino in the

role of gamblers, and employees had to be found who would be willing to

testify against their employers and colleagues, the investigation had

so far been a slow and complicated one. Brunetti found himself

involved in it at the expense of other cases, including that of Ernesto

Moro, where the evidence continued to pile up in support of a judgment

of suicide: the crime lab's report on the shower stall and the boy's

room contained nothing that could be used to justify suspicions about

his death, and none of the statements of students or teachers suggested

anything at variance with the view that it was suicide. Brunetti,

though unpersuaded by the absence of credible evidence in support of

his own view, recalled occasions in the past when his impatience had

proven harmful to investigations. Patience, then, patience and calm

would be his watchwords.


The magistrate appointed to the investigation of the Casino was on the

point of issuing warrants for the arrest of the entire directorate when

the mayor's office put out a statement announcing the transfer of the

director of the Casino to another position in the city administration,

as well as the promotion of his chief assistants to places high in

other city services. Further, the two leading witnesses found

themselves promoted to positions of importance within the reorganized

Casino, whereupon both began to realize that their previous

interpretation of events must have been mistaken. Their case in

rubble, the police backed away from the gorgeous palazzo on the Canal

Grande, and the visiting detectives were sent home.


These events resulted in a late-morning summons from Patta, who

chastised Brunetti for what he considered an overaggressive attitude

toward the Casino administration. Because Brunetti had at no time felt

more than mild disapproval of the behaviour of the suspects always

taking a broad-minded view of crimes against property Patta's


heated words fell upon him with no more effect than spring rainfall

upon sodden earth.


It was when his superior turned his attention to the Moro family that

he found himself attending to what Patta was saying. "Lieutenant

Scarpa has told me that the boy was considered unstable, and so there's

no further need to drag our heels on this. I think it's time we closed

the case."


"By whom, sir?" Brunetti inquired politely.


"What?"


"By whom? Who was it that thought he was unstable?" It was evident

from Patta's response that he had not thought it necessary to ask this

question: Scarpa's assertion would more than suffice by way of proof.


"His teachers, I imagine. People at the school. His friends. Whoever

the lieutenant talked to," Patta shot off in a quick list. "Why do you

ask?"


"Curiosity, sir. I didn't know the lieutenant was interested in the

case."


"I didn't say he was interested Patta said, making no attempt to

disguise his disapproval at this latest evidence of Brunetti's

inability though Patta suspected it was his refusal to do what every

good policeman should do: realize when a suggestion was really an

order. He took a long breath. "Whoever it was he talked to, they said

that the boy was clearly unstable, and so it's even more likely that it

was suicide."


That's certainly what the autopsy indicated Brunetti affirmed mildly.


"Yes, I know." Before Brunetti could ask, Patta went on, "I haven't

had time to read it carefully, but the overview is certainly consistent

with suicide."


There was no doubt in Brunetti's mind as to the author of this

overview; what was in doubt was why Lieutenant Scarpa should take an

interest in a case in which he was not involved.


"Has he had anything else to say about this?" Brunetti asked, trying

his best to sound only mildly interested.


"No. Why?"


"Oh, merely that if the lieutenant is so convinced, then we can inform

the boy's parents that the investigation is closed."


"You've already spoken to them, haven't you?"


"Some days ago, yes. But if you remember, sir, you asked me to be sure

that no doubt could be cast on our conclusions so the father would have

no reason to complain about our work, given that he's already created a

great deal of trouble for other agencies of the state."


"You mean his report?" Patta asked.


"Yes, sir. I was of the understanding that you wanted to be certain he

would have no grounds to launch a similar investigation of our handling

of his son's death." Brunetti paused a moment to assess the effect of

this, and when he saw the first signs of Patta's uneasiness, he drove

in another nail. "He seems to be someone who has earned the trust of

the public, so any complaint he might make would probably be picked up

by the press." He allowed himself a small, dismissive shrug. "But if

Lieutenant Scarpa is satisfied that there's enough evidence to prove to

the parents that it was suicide, then there's certainly no reason for

me to continue working on it." Slapping his hands on his thighs,

Brunetti pushed himself to his feet, eager to go off in pursuit of some

new project, now that the Moro case had so neatly been settled by his

colleague, Lieutenant Scarpa.


"Well," Patta said, drawing the word out, 'perhaps it's hasty to think

that things are as conclusive as Lieutenant Scarpa would like to

believe


"I'm not sure I understand you, sir," Brunetti lied, unwilling to let

Patta off so easily and wondering to what lengths he would go to

distance himself from Scarpa's eagerness to settle matters. Patta said

nothing, and so an emboldened Brunetti asked, "Is there some question

about these people?


These witnesses?" By a remarkable exercise of restraint, Brunetti kept

all hint of sarcasm from the last word. Still Patta | said nothing,

and so Brunetti asked, "What, exactly, did he tell you, sir?" I


Patta waved Brunetti to his seat again and contented himself with

leaning back in his chair, and holding his chin with one hand no doubt

a non-threatening posture learned at a management seminar as a means to

create solidarity with an inferior. He smiled, rubbed briefly at his

left temple, then smiled again. "I think the lieutenant might be too

eager to bring closure to the boy's parents." Surely, this was a word

that had its origin in the same seminar. "That is, it was rumoured at

the school that Moro was not his normal self during the days before his

death. Upon sober reflection, it occurs to me that the lieutenant

might have been hasty to interpret this as proof of suicide," Patta

ventured, then added quickly, 'though I'm sure he's right."


"Did these boys say how he was behaving?" Before Patta could answer

the question, Brunetti asked a second, "And who were these boys?"


"I'm not sure he said," Patta answered.


"Surely it's in his report," Brunetti said, leaning forward minimally

as though expecting Patta to satisfy him by producing the lieutenant's

written report.


"He gave his report orally


"So he didn't mention any names?" Brunetti asked.


"Not that I recall, no," Patta said.


"Do you know if he subsequently submitted a written report?"


"No, but I doubt he'd consider that necessary, not after having spoken

to me," Patta said.


"Of course."


"What's that supposed to mean?" Patta demanded, swiftly returning to

his usual manner.


Brunetti's smile was bland. "Only that he would have


thought he had done his duty by reporting to his superior." He allowed

a long pause to extend beyond this, then changed his expression to one

he'd seen used by a tenor singing the Simpleton in Boris Godunov, "What

should we do now, sir?"


For a moment, he feared he'd gone too far, but Patta's response

suggested he had not. "I think it might be wise to speak to the

parents again," Patta began, 'to see if they're willing to accept the

judgment that it was suicide." There were still times when Patta's

honesty was breathtaking, so absolute was his lack of interest in the

truth.


Brunetti offered, "Perhaps the lieutenant should go and speak to them,

sir? '


That caught Patta's attention. "No, it might be better if you went.

After all, you've already spoken to them, and I imagine they thought

you were sympathetic." Never had that quality sounded so much like a

character defect as when Patta used it in reference to Brunetti. Patta

considered further. "Yes, do it that way. Go and talk to them and see

how they feel. You'll know how to handle it. Once they've accepted

that it was suicide, we can close the case."


"And turn our attention back to the Casino?" Brunetti could not

prevent himself from asking.


The coolness of Patta's glance not only lowered the temperature of the

room; it removed Brunetti to a greater distance. "I think the city has

proven itself capable of attending to that problem," Patta pronounced,

forcing Brunetti, not for the first time, to suspect that his superior

might not be as dull as he'd always found it convenient to believe

him.


Upstairs, he pushed papers around on his desk until he found the thin

file which contained the papers generated by the death of Ernesto Moro.

He dialled the father's number, and after six rings, a man's voice

answered with the surname.


"Dottor Moro," Brunetti said, 'this is Commissario Brunetti. I'd like

to speak to you again, if possible." Moro did not


answer, so Brunetti said into the silence, "Could you tell me a time

that's> convenient for you?"


He heard the other man sigh. "I told you I had nothing further to say

to you, Commissario." His voice was calm, entirely without

expression.


"I know that, Dottore, and I apologize for disturbing you, but I need

to speak to you again."


"Need?"


"I think so."


"We need very little in this life, Commissario. Have you ever

considered that?" Moro asked, quite as if he were prepared to spend

the rest of the afternoon discussing the question.


"Often, sir. And I agree."


"Have you read Ivan Ilych?" Moro surprised him by asking.


The writer or the short story, Dottore?"


Brunetti's response must have surprised Moro in turn, for there

followed a long silence before the doctor answered, The short story."


"Yes. Often."


Again, the doctor sighed, after which the line lay silent for almost a

minute. "Come at four, Commissario/ Moro said and hung up.


Though reluctant to face both of Ernesto's parents on the same day,

Brunetti still forced himself to phone Signora Moro. He let the phone

ring once, cut the connection, then pressed the "Redial' button, filled

with relief when the phone rang on unanswered. He had made no attempt

to keep a check on the whereabouts of either parent. For all he knew,

she could have left the city any time after the boy's funeral two days

ago; left the city, left the country, left everything behind save her

motherhood.


He knew that such thoughts would take him nowhere, and so he returned

his attention to the papers on his desk.


The man who let Brunetti into the Moro apartment at four


that afternoon might well have been the doctor's older brother, if such

a brother were afflicted with some wasting disease. The worst signs

were to be found in his eyes, which seemed covered with a thin film of

opaque liquid. The whites had taken on the tinge of ivory often seen

in people of advanced age, and inverted dark triangles had settled

under both eyes. The fine nose had become a beak, and the thick column

of his neck was now a trunk held upright by tendons that pulled the

skin away from the muscle. To disguise his shock at the change in the

man, Brunetti lowered his gaze to the floor. But when he noticed that

the cuffs of the doctor's trousers hung limply over the backs of his

shoes and dragged on the floor, he raised his eyes and looked directly

at the doctor, who turned away and led him into the sitting room.


"Yes, Commissario? What is it you've come to say?" Moro asked in a

voice of unwavering politeness when they were seated opposite one

another.


Either his cousin had come frequently or someone else was seeing that

the apartment was kept clean. The parquet glistened, the rugs lay in

geometrical regularity, three Murano vases held enormous sprays of

flowers. Death had made no inroads into the evident prosperity of the

family, though Moro might as well have been living in the atrium of a

bank for all the attention he paid to his surroundings.


"I think this has put you beyond lies, Dottore," Brunetti said

abruptly.


Moro displayed no sign that he found Brunetti's words at all unusual.

"You might say that," he answered.


"I've thought a great deal about our last meeting," Brunetti said,

hoping to establish some connection with the man.


"I don't remember it," Moro said, neither smiling nor frowning at the

admission.


"I tried to talk to you about your son."


"That's understandable, Commissario, as he had just died, and you

seemed to be in charge of investigating his death."


Brunetti hunted, but hunted in vain, for sarcasm or anger in the

doctor's tone. I've thought about him a great deal Brunetti

repeated.


"And I think of nothing but my son Moro said coolly.


"Is there anything among your thoughts that you can tell me?" Brunetti

asked, and then amended his question by adding, 'or will tell me?"


"Of what interest could my thoughts be to you, Commissario?" the

doctor asked. As Moro talked, Brunetti observed that his right hand

never stopped moving, as his thumb and middle finger kept rubbing

against one another, busy rolling some invisible object between them.


"As I said, Dottore, I think you must be beyond lies now, so I won't

hide from you the fact that I don't think your son killed himself."


Moro's gaze drifted away from Brunetti for a moment and then returned

to him. "Lies aren't the only thing I'm beyond, Commissario."


"What does that mean?" Brunetti asked with conscious politeness.


That I have little interest in the future."


"Your own?"


"My own or, for that fact, anyone else's."


"Your wife's?" Brunetti asked, ashamed of himself for doing so.


Moro blinked twice, appeared to consider Brunetti's question, and then

answered, "My wife and I are separated."


"Your daughter, then?" Brunetti said, recalling a reference to the

child in one of the articles he had read about Moro.


"She's in her mother's care Moro said with every evidence of

indifference.


Brunetti wanted to say that he was still the girl's father, but he

couldn't bring himself to do so. Instead, he contented himself with

saying, "That's a legal situation, a separation."


It took Moro a long time to answer. Finally he said, "I'm not sure I

understand you


Until now Brunetti had paid little attention to their words, allowing

his consciousness to move ahead as if on automatic pilot. His mind

detached from meaning, he paid closer attention to Moro's tone and

gestures, the way he sat and the pitch of his voice. Brunetti sensed

that the man had moved to some place distant from pain, almost as if

his heart had been put in protective custody and his mind had been left

behind to answer questions. But there remained, as well, an enormous

sense of fear; not fear of Brunetti but of saying something that might

reveal what lay behind the facade of calm restraint.


Brunetti decided to answer what the doctor clearly intended as a

question. "I've spoken to your wife, sir, and she voices no rancour

towards you."


"Did you expect her to?"


"In the situation, yes, I think it would be understandable if she did.

That way, she could somehow hold you responsible for what happened to

your son. Presumably it was your decision that he attend the

Academy."


Moro shot him a stunned glance, opened his mouth as if to speak in his

own defence, but stopped himself and said nothing. Brunetti averted

his eyes from the other man's anger, and when he looked back, Moro's

face was empty of feeling.


For a long time, Brunetti could think of nothing to say until at last

he spoke entirely without thinking. "I'd like you to trust me,

Dottore."


After a long time, Moro said, voice tired, "And I'd like to trust you,

Commissario. But I do not and will not." He saw Brunetti preparing to

object and quickly went on, "It's not because you don't seem like a

perfectly honest man but because I have learned to trust no one."

Brunetti tried to speak again, and this time Moro held up a hand to

stop him.


"Further, you represent a state I perceive as both criminal and

negligent, and that is enough to exclude you, absolutely, from my

trust."


The words, at first, offended Brunetti and roused in him a desire to

defend himself and his honour, but in the stillness that fell after

Moro stopped talking, he realized that the doctor's words had nothing

at all to do with him personally: Moro saw him as contaminated simply

because he worked for the state. Brunetti realized he had too much

sympathy for that position to attempt to argue against it.


Brunetti got to his feet, but he did so tiredly, with none of the faked

energy he had devoted to the same gesture when talking to Patta. "If

you decide you can talk to me, Dottore, please call me."


"Of course," the doctor said with the pretence of politeness. Moro

pushed himself from his own chair, led Brunetti to the door, and let

him out of the apartment.


Outside, he reached for his telefonino, only to realize he'd left it in

the office or at home in another jacket. He resisted the siren song

whispering to him that it was futile to call Signora Moro this late in

the afternoon, that she wouldn't talk to him. He resisted it, at any

rate, long enough to make two unsuccessful attempts to call her from

public phones. The first, one of the new, aerodynamic silver phones

that had replaced the reliable ugly oranges ones, refused to accept his

plastic phone card, and the second rejected his attempts with a

repeated mechanical bleat in place of a dialling tone. He yanked the

card from the phone, slipped it back in his wallet and, feeling

justified that he had at least made the effort, decided to go back to

the Questura for what little remained of the working day.


As he stood in the gondola traghetto that ran between the Salute and

San Marco, his Venetian knees adjusted automatically to the thrust and

counter-thrust between the strokes of the gondolieri's oars and the

waves of the incoming tide. He looked ahead as they made their slow

passage across


the Canal Grande, struck by just how jaded a person could become: ahead

of him lay Palaz/o Ducale, and behind it popped up the gleaming domes

of the Basilica di San Marco: Brunetti stared as though they were

nothing more than the painted backdrop in a dull, provincial production

of Otello. How had he got to the point where he could look on such

beauty and not be shaken? Accompanied by the dull squeal of the oars,

he followed this train of thought and asked himself how, equally, he

could sit across from Paola at a meal and not want to run his hands

across her breasts or how he could see his children sitting side by

side on the sofa, doing something stupid like watching television, and

not feel his bowels churn with terror at the many dangers that would

beset their lives.


The gondola glided in to the landing, and he stepped up on to the dock,

telling himself to leave his stupid preoccupations in the boat. Long

experience had taught him that his sense of wonder was still intact and

would return, bringing back with it an almost painful awareness of the

beauty that surrounded him at every turn.


A beautiful woman of his acquaintance had, years ago, attempted to

convince him that her beauty was in some ways a curse because it was

all that anyone cared about, to the almost total exclusion of any other

quality she might possess. At the time, he had dismissed it as an

attempt to win compliments, which he was more than willing to give, but

now perhaps he understood what she meant, at least in relation to the

city. No one really cared what happened to her how else explain her

successive recent governments? just so long as they could profit from

and be seen in the reflection of her beauty, at least for as long as

that beauty lasted.


At the Questura, he went up to Signorina Elettra's office, where he

found her reading that day's Gazzettino. She smiled at his arrival and

pointed at the lead story. The Americans' Appointed President seems to

want to eliminate all


restrictions on the burning of carbon-based fuels she said, then read

him the headline: "a slap in the face for the


FCOf OOTSTS"."


"Sounds like something he'd do Brunetti said, not interested in

continuing the discussion and wondering if Signorina Elettra had been

converted to Vianello's passionate ecological views.


She looked up at him, then back to the paper. "And this: "venice

condemned"."


"What?" Brunetti demanded, taken aback by headline and with no idea of

what it referred to.


"Well, if the temperature rises, then the ice-caps will melt, and then

the seas will rise, and there goes Venice." She sounded remarkably

calm about it.


"And Bangladesh, as well, one might observe Brunetti added.


"Of course. I wonder if the Appointed President has considered the

consequences."


"I don't think that's in his powers, considering consequences Brunetti

observed. It was his custom to avoid political discussions with the

people with whom he worked; he was uncertain whether foreign politics

were included under that ban.


"Probably not. Besides, all the refugees will end up here, not

there."


"What refugees?" Brunetti asked, not clear where the conversation was

going.


"From Bangladesh. If the country is flooded and finds itself

permanently under water, the people certainly aren't going to remain

there and agree to drown so that they don't inconvenience anyone.

They'll have to migrate somewhere, and as there's little chance they'll

be allowed to go east, they'll end up here."


"Isn't your geography a bit imaginative here, Signorina?"


"I don't mean they, the Bangladeshis, will come here, but


the people they displace will move west, and the ones they displace

will end up here, or the ones That they in then turn displace will."

She looked up, confused at his slowness in understanding. "You've read

history, haven't you, sir?" At his nod, she concluded, Then you know

that this is what happens."


"Perhaps," Brunetti said, his scepticism audible.


"We'll see," she said mildly and folded the paper closed. "What can I

do for you, sir?"


"I spoke to the Vice-Questore this morning, and he seemed reluctant to

put his entire faith in Lieutenant Scarpa's opinion that the Moro boy

killed himself."


"Is he afraid of a Moro Report on the police?" she asked, grasping at

once what Patta himself probably refused to admit.


"More than likely. At any rate, he wants us to exclude all other

possibilities before he closes the case."


There's only one other possibility, isn't there?"


"Yes."


"What do you think?" She shoved the paper aside on her desk and leaned

slightly forward, her body giving evidence of the curiosity she managed

to keep out of her voice.


"I can't believe he committed suicide."


She agreed. "It doesn't make sense that a boy that young would leave

his family behind."


"Kids don't always have their parents' feelings in mind when they

decide to do something," Brunetti temporized, unsure why he did so;

perhaps to muster the arguments he knew would be presented against his

own opinion.


"I know that. But there's the little sister," she said. "You'd think

he'd give her some thought. But maybe you're right."


"How old is she?" Brunetti asked, intrigued by this mystery child in

whom both parents had displayed so little interest.


There was something about her in one of the articles about


the family, or perhaps someone I know said something about her,

Sigiiorma Eiettra answered, Everyone s talking about them now." She

closed her eyes, trying to remember. She tilted her head to one side,

and he imagined her scrolling through the banks of information in her

mind. Finally she said, "It must be something I read because I don't

have any emotional memory of having heard it, and I'd have that if

someone had told me about her."


"Have you saved everything?"


"Yes, all of the newspaper clippings and the articles from the

magazines are in the file, the same one that has the articles about

Dottor Moro's report." Before he could ask to see it, she said, "No,

I'll look through them. I might remember the article when I see it or

start reading it." She glanced at her watch. "Give me fifteen minutes

and I'll bring it up to you."


Thank you, Signorina," he said and went to his office to wait for her.

He called Signora Moro's number, but still there was no answer. Why

had she not mentioned the daughter, and why, in both houses, had there

been no sign of the child? He started to make a list of the things he

wanted Signorina Elettra to check and was still adding to it when she

came into the office, the file in her hand. "Here it is, sir," she

said as she came in. "Valentina. She's nine."


"Does it say which parent she lives with?"


"No, nothing at all," she said. "She was mentioned in an article about

Moro, six years ago. It said he had one son, Ernesto, twelve, and the

daughter, Valentina, three. And the article in La Nuova mentions

her."


"I didn't see any sign of her when I spoke to the parents."


"Did you say anything?"



"About the girl?"


"No, I don't mean that, sir. Did you say anything that might have

given her mother the opportunity to mention her?"


Brunetti tried to recall his conversation with Signora Moro. "No,

nothing that I can remember."


"Then it's possible she wouldn't have mentioned her, isn't it?"


For almost two decades, Brunetti had shared his home with one, then

both, of his children, and he could not recall a single instant when

physical proof of their existence had been absent from their home:

toys, clothing, shoes, scarves, books, papers, Discmen lay spread about

widely and chaotically. Words, pleas, threats proved equally futile in

the no-doubt biological need of the young of the human species to

litter their nest. A man of meaner spirit might have considered this

an infestation: Brunetti thought of it as one of nature's ways to

prepare a parent's patience for the future, when the mess would become

emotional and moral, not merely physical.


"But I would have seen some sign of her, I think," he insisted.


"Maybe they've sent her to stay with relatives," Signorina Elettra

suggested.


"Yes, perhaps," Brunetti agreed, though he wasn't convinced. No matter

how often his kids had gone to stay with their grandparents or other

relatives, signs of their recent habitation had always lingered behind

them. Suddenly he had a vision of what it must have been for the Moros

to attempt to remove evidence of Ernesto's presence from their homes,

and he thought of the danger that would remain behind: a single, lonely

sock found at the back of a closet could break a mother's heart anew; a

Spice Girls disc carelessly shoved into the plastic case meant to hold

Vivaldi's flute sonatas could shatter any calm. Months, perhaps years,

would pass before the house would stop being a minefield, every cabinet

or drawer to be opened with silent dread.


His reverie was interrupted by Signorina Elettra, who leaned forward to

place the file on his desk.


"Thank you," he said. "I have a number of things I'd like you to try

to check for me." He slid the paper towards her, listing them as he

did so.


*34


"Find out, if you can, where the girl goes to school. If she's living

here or lived here with either of them, then she's got to be enrolled

in one of the schools. There are the grandparents: see if you can

locate them. Moro's cousin, Luisa Moro I don't have an address for her

might know." He thought of the people in Siena and asked her to call

the police there and have them find out if the child was living with

them. She ran her finger down the list as he spoke. "And I'd like you

to do the same for his wife: friends, relatives, colleagues," he

concluded.


She looked at him and said, "You aren't going to let this go, are

you?"


He pushed himself back in his chair but didn't get to his feet. "I

don't like any of it, and I don't like anything I've heard. Nobody's

told me the truth and nobody's told me why they won't."


"What does that mean?"


Brunetti smiled and said it gently. "For the moment, all it means is

that I'd like you to get me all the information I've asked for."


"And when I do?" she asked, not for an instant doubting that she would

find it.


Then perhaps we'll start proving a negative."


"Which negative, sir."


"That Ernesto Moro didn't kill himself."


Before he left the Questura, he made one more call to Signora Moro's

number, feeling not unlike an importunate suitor growing ever more

persistent in the face of a woman's continued lack of response. He

wondered if he'd overlooked some mutual friend who might put in a good

word for him and realized how he was returning to the tactics of former

times, when his attempts to meet women had been animated by entirely

different hopes.


Just as he was approaching the underpass leading into Campo San

Bartolomeo, his mind on this unsettling parallel, he registered a

sudden darkness in front of him. He looked up, still not fully

attentive to his surroundings, and saw four San Martino cadets

wheeling, arms linked, as straight across as if on parade, into the

calk from the campo. The long dark capes of their winter uniforms

swirled out on either flank and effectively filled the entire width of

the calle. Two women, one old and one young, instinctively backed up

against the plate glass windows of the bank, and a pair of

map-embracing tourists did the same against the windows of the bar on

the


other side. Leaving the four shipwrecked pedestrians in their wake,

the unbroken wave of boys swept towards him.


Brunetti raised his eyes to theirs boys no older than his own son and

the glances that came back to him were as blank and pitiless as the

sun. His right foot might have faltered for an instant, but by an act

of will he shoved it forward and continued towards them, stride

unbroken, his face implacable, as though he were alone in Calle della

Bissa, the entire city his.


The boys drew closer, and he recognized the cadet to the left of centre

as the one who had tried to interrogate him at the school. The

atavistic urge of the more powerful male to assert his supremacy

shifted Brunetti's direction two compass points until he was heading

straight for the boy. He tightened his stomach muscles and stiffened

his elbows, preparing for the shock of contact, but at the instant

before impact, the boy next to the one who had become Brunetti's target

loosened his grip and moved to the right, creating a narrow space

through which Brunetti could pass. As his foot entered the space, he

saw, from the corner of his eye, the left foot of the boy he recognized

move minimally to the side, surely bent on tripping him. Carefully,

thrusting forward with his full weight behind him, he took aim at the

boy's ankle and felt a satisfying jolt as the toe of his shoe found its

target, glanced off, and came down on the pavement. Not pausing for an

instant, Brunetti strode on and out into the campo, cut left, and

started for the bridge.


Because Raffi as well as Chiara was at dinner, and because he thought

it unseemly to manifest pride in such mean spirited behaviour in their

presence, he said nothing about his meeting with the cadets and

contented himself with the meal. Paola had brought home ravioli di

zucca and had prepared them with salvia leaves quickly sauteed in

butter, then smothered them with Parmigiano. After that, she had

switched to fennel, serving it interspersed with pan-fried veal


pieces that had spent the previous night in the refrigerator,

marinating in a paste of rosemary, garlic, fennel seed and minced

pancetta.


As he ate, delighted by the mingled tastes and the pleasant sharpness

of his third glass of Sangiovese, he remembered his earlier uneasiness

about the safety of his children, and the thought made him feel

foolish. He could not, however, dismiss it or allow himself to scoff

at the desire that nothing would ever invade their peace. He never

knew if his perpetual readiness for things to change for the worse was

the result of his native pessimism or of the experiences his profession

had exposed him to. In either case, his vision of happiness had always

to pass through a filter of uneasiness.


"Why don't we ever have beef any more?" Raffi asked.


Paola, peeling a pear, said, "Because Gianni can't find a farmer he

trusts


"Trusts to do what?" Chiara asked between grapes.


To have animals he's sure are healthy, I suppose," Paola answered.


"I don't like eating it any more, anyway," Chiara said.


"Why not? Because it'll make you crazy?" her brother asked, then

amended it to "Crazier?"


"I think we've had more than enough mad cow jokes at this table," Paola

said with an unusual lack of patience.


"No, not because of that," Chiara said.


Then why?" Brunetti asked.


"Oh, just because Chiara answered evasively.


"Because of what?" her brother asked.


"Because we don't need to eat them


That never bothered you before," Raffi countered.


"I know it never bothered me before. Lots of things didn't. But now

they do She turned to him and delivered what she clearly thought would

be a death blow. "It's called growing up, in case you've never heard

of it


Raffi snorted, driving her to new defences.


"We don't need to eat them just because we can. Besides, it's

ecologically wasteful she insisted, like someone repeating a lesson,

which Brunetti thought was most likely the case.


"What would you eat instead?" Raffi asked, 'zucchini?" He turned to

his mother and asked, "Are we allowed to make mad zucchini jokes?"


Paola, displaying the Olympian disregard for the feelings of her

children which Brunetti so admired, said only, Till take that as an

offer to do the dishes, Raffi, shall I?"


Raffi groaned, but he did not protest. A Brunetti less familiar with

the cunning of the young would have seen this as a sign that his son

was willing to assume some responsibility for the care of their home,

perhaps as evidence of burgeoning maturity. The real Brunetti,

however, a man hardened by decades of exposure to the furtiveness of

criminals, could see it for what it was: cold-blooded bargaining in

which immediate acquiescence was traded for some future reward.


As Raffi reached across the table to pick up his mother's plate, Paola

smiled upon him with favour and, displaying a familiarity with slyness

equal to that of her husband, got to her feet, saying, Thank you so

much, dear, for offering, and no, you cannot take scuba lessons."


Brunetti watched her leave the room, then turned to watch his son's

face. Raffi's surprise was patent, and when he saw that his father was

looking at him, he removed that expression but had the grace to smile.

"How does she do that?" Raffi asked. "All the time."


Brunetti was about to offer some bromide about its being one of the

powers of mothers to be able to read the minds of their children, when

Chiara, who had been busy finishing the fruit on the platter, looked up

at them and said, "It's because she reads Henry James."


In her study, Brunetti told Paola about his run-in with the cadets,

deciding not to mention the rush of animal triumph he had felt when his

foot made contact with the boy's ankle.


"It's a good thing it happened here she said when he finished, then

added, 'in Italy."


"Why? What do you mean?"


"There are a lot of places where something like that could get you

killed."


"Name two he said, offended that she could so cavalierly dismiss what

he saw as evidence of his bravery.


"Sierra Leone and the United States, to begin with she said. "But that

doesn't mean I'm not happy you did it."


Brunetti said nothing for a long time, then asked, "Does it show, how

much I dislike them?"


Them who?"


"Boys like that, with their wealthy, well-connected families and their

sense of command."


"Families like mine, you mean?" In their early years together, before

Brunetti came to realize that the shocking brutality of Paola's honesty

was often entirely unaggressive, he would have been astonished by her

question. Now all he did was answer it. "Yes."


She laced her fingers together and propped her chin on her knuckles. "I

think only someone who knows you very well would see it. Or someone

who pays close attention to what you say."


"Like you?" he asked, smiling.


"Yes."


"Why do you think it is, that they get to me so easily?"


She considered this; it was not that she had not thought about it

before, but he had never asked the question so directly. "I think part

of it is your sense of justice."


"Not jealousy?" he asked, trying to make sure she would be

complimentary.


"No, at least not jealousy in any simple sense." He leaned back on the

sofa and latched his fingers behind his head. He shifted around,

seeking a comfortable position, and when she saw that he'd found it,

she went on. "I think part of it comes from your resentment not that

some people have more than others, but that they don't realize or don't

want to admit that their money doesn't make them superior or give them

the right to anything they choose to do." When he didn't query this

she continued: "And from their refusal to consider the possibility that

their greater fortune is not anything they've earned or merited." She

smiled at him, then said, "At least I think that's why you dislike them

as much as you do."


"And you?" he asked. "Do you dislike them?" With a ringing laugh,

she said, There are too many of them in my family to allow me to." He

laughed along with her, and she added, "I did, when I was young and

more idealistic than I am now. But then I realized they weren't going

to change, and I had come by then to love some of them so much and I

knew nothing was ever going to change that, so I saw that I had no

choice but to accept them as they are." "Love before truth?" he

asked, striving for irony. "Love before everything, I'm afraid, Guido

she said in deadly earnest.


As he walked to the Questura the next morning, it occurred to Brunetti

that he had been overlooking at least one anomaly in all of this: why

had the boy been boarding at the school? So caught up had he been in

the order and rules of life at the Academy that, as he searched

Ernesto's room, the obvious question had not arisen: in a culture that

encouraged young people to live at home until their marriage, why was

this young man living away from home, when both parents lived in the

city?


At the Questura, he almost bumped into Signorina Elettra


emerging from the front door. "Are you going somewhere?" he asked.


She glanced at her watch. "Do you need something, sir?" she asked,

not really an answer, though he didn't notice.


"Yes, I'd like you to make a phone call for me."


She stepped back inside the door and asked, To whom?"


The San Martino Academy."


With no attempt to disguise the curiosity in her voice, she asked, "And

what would you like me to tell them?" She started to walk back towards

the stairs that led to her office.


"I want to know if it's obligatory for the boys to sleep in the

dormitory or if they're allowed to spend the night at home if their

parents live in the city. I'd like to get an idea of just how

inflexible the rules are there. Perhaps you could say you're a parent

and want to know something about the Academy. You can say your son is

just finishing school and has always wanted to be a soldier, and as

you're Venetian, you'd like him to have the opportunity to attend the

San Martino because of its high reputation."


"And is my voice to be filled with pride and patriotism as I ask these

questions?"


"Choking with them he said.


She could not have done it better. Though Signorina Elettra spoke an

Italian as elegant and pure as any he had heard, as well as a very

old-fashioned Venetian dialect, she managed to mingle the two perfectly

on the phone and succeeded in sounding exactly like what she said she

was: the Venetian wife of a Roman banker who had just been sent north

to head the Venice branch of a bank she carelessly avoided naming.

After making the secretary at the Academy wait while she found a pen

and pencil and then apologizing for not having them next to the phone

the way her husband insisted she do, Signorina Elettra asked for

particulars of the date of the beginning of the next school term, their

policy on late admission, and where to have letters of recommendation

and


academic records sent. When the school secretary offered to provide

details about school fees and the cost of uniforms, the banker's wife

dismissed the very idea, insisting that their accountant dealt with

things like that.


Listening to the conversation on the speaker phone, Brunetti was amazed

at the way Signorina Elettra threw herself into the role, could all but

see her returning home that evening after a hard day's shopping to

check if the cook had found real basilica genovese for the pesto. Just

as the secretary said she hoped that young Filiberto and his parents

would find the school satisfactory, Signorina Elettra gasped, "Ah, yes,

one last question. It will be all right if he sleeps at home at night,

won't it?"


"I beg your pardon, Signora/ the secretary said. The boys are expected

to live here at the school. It's included in the fees. Where else

would your son live?"


"Here with us in the palazzo, of course. You can't expect him to live

with those other boys, can you? He's only sixteen." Had the secretary

asked her to give her life-blood, the banker's wife could have sounded

no less horrified. "Of course we'll pay the full fees, but it's

unthinkable that a child that young should be taken from his mother."


"Ah," the secretary answered upon hearing the first part of Signorina

Elettra's last sentence, managing not to register the second, 'in a few

cases, with the approval of the Comandante some exceptions can perhaps

be made, though the boys have to be at their first class at eight."


That's why we have the launch was Signorina Elettra's opening shot in

her last volley, which drew to a close with her promise to send the

signed papers and the necessary deposit off by the end of the week,

followed by a polite goodbye.


Brunetti found himself filled with unwonted sympathy for Vice-Questore

Patta: the man simply didn't have a chance. "Filiberto?" he asked.


"It was his father's choice Signorina Elettra replied. "And yours?

Eustasio?" "No, Eriprando."


The information that exceptions to the school rules could be made at

the discretion of the Comandante did not tell Brunetti anything he had

not already suspected: where the children of the wealthy and powerful

congregated, rules were often bent to follow the whim of their parents.

What he did not know was the extent of the Comandante's subservience.

Nor, he had to admit, did he have a clear idea of how this might be

related to Ernesto's death.


Deciding not to speculate further, Brunetti dialled Signora Moro's

phone again, and again the phone rang on unanswered. Spurred by some

impulse he registered but did not question, he decided to pass by her

apartment and see if any of her neighbours could give him an idea of

where she was.


He chose to take the vaporetto to San Marco, then cut back towards the

apartment. He rang the bell, waited, and rang again. Then he rang the

bell to the left of hers, waited, then rang the others in succession,

working his way across and down, like a climber rappelling down the

face of a cliff. The


first response came from an apartment on the first floor, the bell of

which bore the name Delia Vedova. A woman's voice answered, and when

he explained that he was from the police and needed to speak to Signora

Moro, the door clicked open. As he entered, the light in the dim hall

flashed on, and a few moments later a woman's voice called from above,

"Up here, Signore."


He ascended the steps, and noted that attached to one side of them was

a system which would allow a wheelchair to move up and down. The

explanation waited just inside the door at the top of the steps: a

young woman in a wheelchair, an enormous grey cat resting on her lap.

As he reached the landing, she smiled at him and, shifting the cat to

one side, reached up with her right hand. "Beatrice Delia Vedova/ she

said, "My pleasure to meet you."


He gave his name and rank, then she put both hands on the wheels of her

chair, whipped it around in a neat half-circle and propelled herself

back into the apartment. Brunetti followed her inside, closing the

door behind him.


She led him into a living room in the centre of which stood an

architect's drawing board that had been lowered almost a metre to a

height that would allow her wheelchair to slip comfortably under it.

Its surface was covered with water colour sketches of bridges and

canals, painted in the Day-Glo colours tourists seemed to favour. By

contrast, the three views of the facades of churches San Zaccaria, San

Martino and San Giovanni in Bragora that hung on the rear wall all

showed a close attention to architectural detail that was absent from

the paintings on the drawing board. Their muted colours captured the

glowing warmth of stone and the play of light on the canal in front of

San Martino and on the facades of the other churches.


She spun around and saw him studying the drawings on the wall. That's

what I really do," she said. Then, with a vague swipe at the paintings

on the board, she added, "And


that's what I get paid to do." She bent down to the cat and whispered

in its ear, "We've got to keep you in Whiskas, don't we, fatty?"


The cat rose slowly from her lap and jumped, with a thump that surely

could be heard in the entrance hall below, to the floor. Tail raised,

it walked from the room. The woman smiled up at Brunetti. "I never

know if he's offended at my comments about his weight or if he just

doesn't like being made to feel responsible for those paintings." She

let this lie in the air between them, then with a smile added, "Either

position seems justified, wouldn't you say?"


Brunetti smiled in return, and she asked him to take a seat. As he

did, she wheeled her chair around until it was facing him. She might

have been in her late twenties, though the flecking of grey in her hair

made her seem older, as did the vertical lines between her eyebrows.

Her eyes were a light amber, her nose a bit too large for the rest of

her face, her mouth so soft and relaxed that it seemed out of place on

a face so marked with what Brunetti thought was a history of pain.


"You said you were interested in Signora Moro?" she prompted.


"Yes, I'd like to speak to her. I've been phoning but she's never

home. The last time I spoke to her, she ..."


The woman cut him off. "When was that?"


"Some days ago. She didn't say anything about leaving the city."


"No, she wouldn't. Say anything, I mean."


Brunetti registered the remark and said, The didn't get the feeling

that .. ." He paused, not certain how to express it. "I didn't have

the feeling that she had anywhere to go."


Signora or Signorina Delia Vedova looked at him with fresh interest.

"Why do you say that?"


"I don't know. I just had a very strong feeling that the city was

where she belonged and that she had no interest in going anywhere. Or

desire."


When it seemed that Brunetti had no more to say, she replied, "She

didn't. Have anywhere to go, that is."


"Do you know her well?"


"No, not really. She's been here for less than two years."


"Since the accident?" Brunetti asked.


She looked at Brunetti, and all pleasantness disappeared from her face.

This," she said, flipping the fingers of her right hand across her lap

to indicate the legs that rested uselessly below it, 'was an accident.

What happened to Federica was not."


Brunetti stifled any response he might have made to this and asked,

calmly, "Are you so sure of that?"


"Of course not," she said, her voice calm again. "I wasn't there and I

didn't see what happened. But Federica, the two times she spoke to me

about it, said, "When they shot me..." People who are in accidents

don't talk about it that way."


Brunetti had no doubt that this woman knew full well how people who

were in accidents speak. "She said this twice?"


"Yes, so far as I can remember. But simply by way of description, not

complaint. I never asked her what happened, didn't want to pry. I've

had enough of that myself. And I figured she'd tell me what she wanted

to when she was ready."


"And has she?"


She shook her head. "No, only those two references."


"Have you seen her often?"


"Perhaps every week or so. She stops in and has a coffee or simply

comes down and talks for a while."


"Did you know her before she moved into this apartment?"


"No. I knew about her husband, of course. But I suppose everyone

does. Because of his report, I mean." Brunetti nodded. "I met her

because of Gastone she said.


"Gastone?"


The cat. She found him outside the front door one day and when she

opened the door, he came in. When he came up and


stood outside my door, she knocked and asked me if he were mine. He

gets out of here sometimes and then lurks out in the calle until

someone opens the door, or rings my bell and asks me to open the street

door so they can let him in. People who know he's mine, that is." Her

face warmed in a smile. "Good thing they do. It's not as if it's easy

for me to go down and let him in." She said this simply, and Brunetti

did not hear in it an unspoken prompting to strangers to ask questions,

nor did he hear an unconscious appeal for pity.


"When did you see her last?"


She had to think about this. The day before yesterday, and I didn't

really see her, just heard her on the stairs. I'm sure of that. I'd

read about the boy's death, and then, when she came in, I recognized

her steps outside. I went over to the door, and I was going to open

it, but then I didn't know what I could say to her, so I didn't. I

just sat here and listened to her go up the stairs. Then, about an

hour later, I heard her come down again."


"And since then?"


"Nothing." Before he could speak, she added, "But I sleep in the back

of the apartment, and I sleep very deeply because of the pills I take,

so she could have come in or gone out and I wouldn't have heard her."


"Has she called you?"


"No."


"Is it like her to be away for two days?"


Her answer was immediate, "No, not at all. In fact, she's almost

always here, but I haven't heard her on the steps and I haven't heard

her moving around in her apartment." She said this last with a gesture

towards the ceiling.


"Do you have any idea where she might have gone?"


"No. None. We didn't talk to one another like that." When he looked

puzzled, she tried to clarify things. "I mean, we weren't friends,

just lonely women who talked to one another once in a while."


There was no hidden message in that, either, so far as Brunetti could

tell: merely the truth, and the truth told clear. "And she lived

alone?"


"Yes, so far as I know."


"No one ever visited her?"


"Not that I know of, no."


"You never heard a child?"


"Do you mean her son?"


"No, her daughter."


"Daughter?" she asked, her surprise answering the question for him.

She shook her head.


"Never?"


Again she shook her head, as though the idea of a mother never

mentioning one of her children was something too shocking to bear

comment.


"Did she ever mention her husband?"


"Seldom."


"And how? That is, how did she speak about him? With rancour?

Anger?"


She thought for a moment and then answered, "No, she mentioned him in a

normal way."


"Affectionately?"


She gave him a quick glance, rich in unspoken curiosity, then answered,

"No, I couldn't say that. She simply mentioned him, quite

neutrally."


"Could you give me an example?" Brunetti asked, wanting to get a feel

of it.


"Once, we were talking about the hospital." She stopped here, then

sighed, and continued. "We were talking about the mistakes they make,

and she said that her husband's report had put an end to that, but only

for a short time."


He waited for her to clarify, but it seemed that she had said enough.

Brunetti could think of nothing else to ask her. He got to his feet.

"Thank you, Signora/ he said, leaning down to shake her hand.


She smiled in response and turned her wheelchair towards the door.

Brunetti got there first and was reaching for the handle when she

called out, "Wait." Thinking she had remembered something that might

be important, Brunetti turned, then looked down when he felt a sudden

pressure against his left calf. It was Gastone, serpentining his way

back and forth, suddenly friendly with this person who had the power to

open the door. Brunetti picked him up, amazed at the sheer mass of

him. Smiling, he placed him in the woman's lap, said goodbye, and let

himself out of the apartment, though he did not pull the door closed

until he made sure that there was no sign of Gastone between the door

and the jamb.


As he had known he would do ever since Signora Delia Vedova told him

that there had been no sign of Signora Moro for two days, Brunetti went

up the stairs to her apartment. The door was a simple one: whoever

owned the apartment had no concern that his tenants should be safe from

burglars. Brunetti took out his wallet and slid out a thin plastic

card. Some years ago, Vianello had taken it from a burglar so

successful he had become careless. Vianello had used it on more than

one occasion, always in flagrant violation of the law, and upon his

promotion from Sergeant to Inspector, he had given it to Brunetti in

token of his realization that the promotion was due primarily to

Brunetti's insistence and support. At the time, Brunetti had

entertained the possibility that Vianello was merely freeing himself of

an occasion of sin, but the card had since then proven so useful that

Brunetti had come to appreciate it as the gift it was.


He slipped it between the door and the jamb, just at the height of the

lock, and the door swung open at a turn of the handle. Long habit made

him stop just inside the door and sniff the air, hunting for the scent

of death. He smelled dust and old cigarette smoke and the memory of

some sharp


cleaning agent, but there was no scent of rotting flesh. Relieved, he

closed the door behind him and walked into the sitting room. He found

it exactly as he had left it: the furniture in the same position, the

single book that had been lying face down on the arm of a sofa still

there, still at the same page, for all he knew.


The kitchen was in order: no dishes in the sink, and when he pried the

door open with the toe of his shoe, he found no perishable food in the

refrigerator. He took a pen from the inner pocket of his jacket and

opened all of the cabinets: the only thing he found was an open tin of

coffee.


In the bathroom, he opened the medicine cabinet with the back of a

knuckle and found nothing more than a bottle of aspirin, a used shower

cap, an unopened bottle of shampoo, and a package of emery boards. The

towels on the rack were dry.


The only room left was the bedroom, and Brunetti entered it uneasily:

he disliked this part of his job as much as anything about it. On the

nightstand beside the bed a thin rectangle of clear space stood

outlined in the dust: she had removed a photo from there. Two more had

been taken from the dresser. Drawers and closet, however, seemed full

as far as he could tell, and two suitcases lay under the bed.

Shameless now, he pulled back the covers on the side of the bed closest

to the door and lifted the pillow. Under it, neatly folded, lay a

man's white dress shirt. Brunetti pulled it out and let it fall open.

It would have fitted Brunetti, but the shoulders would have fallen from

Signora Moro's, and the sleeves would have come far down over her

hands. Just over the heart of the man who would wear the shirt he saw

the initials "FM' embroidered in thread so fine it could only have been

silk.


He folded the shirt and replaced it under the pillow, then pulled the

covers up and tucked them neatly in place. He went back through the

living room and let himself out of the


apartment. As he passed the door to the Delia Vedova apartment, he

wondered if she was sitting inside, holding her cat, listening for the

footsteps that carried life back and forth outside her door.


i8


It was not until after the kids had gone to bed that night, when he and

Paola sat alone in the living room, she reading Persuasion for the

hundred and twenty-seventh time, and he contemplating Anna Comnena's

admonition that, "Whenever one assumes the role of historian,

friendship and enmities have to be forgotten', that Brunetti returned

to his visit to Signora Moro's apartment, though he did so indirectly.

"Paola," he began. She peered at him over the top of her book, eyes

vague and inattentive. "What would you do if I asked you for a

separation?"


Her eyes had drifted back to the page before he spoke, but they shot

back to his face now, and Anne Elliot was left to her own romantic

problems. "If you what?"


"Asked for a separation."


Voice level, she inquired, "Before I go into the kitchen to get the

bread knife, could you tell me if this is a theoretical question?"


"Absolutely/ he said, embarrassed by how happy her threat of violence

had made him. "What would you do?"


She placed the book by her side, face down. "Why do you want to

know?"


Till tell you that as soon as you answer my question. What would you

do?"


Her look was discomfiting. "Well?" he prodded.


"If it were a real separation, I'd throw you out of the house and after

you I'd throw everything you own."


His smile was positively beatific. "Everything?"


"Yes. Everything. Even the things I like."


"Would you use one of my shirts to sleep in?"


"Are you out of your mind?"


"And if it were a fake separation?"


"Fake?"


"Done so that it would look as if we were separated when in reality we

weren't but just needed to look as if we were."


"I'd still throw you out, but I'd keep all the things I like."


"And the shirt? Would you sleep in it?"


She gave him a long look. "Do you want a serious answer or more

foolishness?"


"I think I want a real answer he confessed.


Then yes, I'd sleep in your shirt or I'd put it on my pillow so that I

could have at least the smell of you with me."


Brunetti believed in the solidity of his marriage with the same faith

he invested in the periodic table of the elements, indeed, rather more;

nevertheless, occasional reinforcement did no harm. He found himself

equally assured of the solidity of the Moros' marriage, though he had

no idea what that meant.


"Signora Moro," he began, 'is living apart from her husband." Paola

nodded, acknowledging that he had already told her this. "But one of

his dress shirts is under the pillow of the bed in which she is

sleeping alone."


Paola looked off to the left, to where an occasional light could still

be seen burning in the top floor window of the apartment opposite.

After a long time, she said, "Ah."


*55


"Yes/ he agreed," "Ah," indeed


"Why do they have to look as if they're separated?"


"So whoever shot her won't come back and do a better job of it, I'd

guess."


"Yes, that makes sense." She thought about this, then asked, "And who

could they be?"


"If I knew that, I'd probably understand everything."


Automatically, not really thinking about what she said but asserting

truth by habit, she said, "We never know everything."


"Then at least I'd know more than I know now. And I'd probably know

who killed the boy


"You won't let that go, will you?" she asked entirely without

reproof.


"No/


"Probably wise not to she agreed.


"So you think he was murdered, too?"


"I always did


"Why?"


"Because I trust your feelings and because your feeling about it was so

strong


"And if I'm wrong?"


Then we're wrong together she said. She picked up her book, slipped a

bookmark between the pages, and closed it. Setting it down, she said,

"I can't read any more


The neither he said, setting Anna Comnena on the table in front of

him.


She looked across at him and asked, "Is it all right if I don't wear

one of your shirts?"


He laughed out loud and they went to bed.


The first thing he did the next morning was to go see Signorina

Elettra, whom he found in her office. Her desk was covered with at

least six bouquets of flowers, each wrapped separately in a cone of

pastel paper. As he knew she had a


standing order for flowers to be delivered on Monday from Biancat, he

wondered if he'd got things wrong in thinking today was Tuesday or if

he'd somehow invented the events of the previous day.


"Are those from Biancat?" he asked.


She ripped two of the packages open and began to place dwarf sunflowers

in a green vase. "No, they're from Rialto." She stepped back from the

desk, studied the arrangement, then added three more sunflowers.


"Then it's really Tuesday?"


She gave him a strange look and answered, "Of course."


"Don't the flowers usually arrive on Monday?"


She smiled, lifted the vase, and placed it on the other side of her

computer. "Yes, they usually do. But the Vice-Questore has begun to

cause quite a fuss about office expenses, so, because they're so much

cheaper there, I thought I'd get them from Rialto for a while, until

something diverts him."


"Did you bring them all yourself?" he asked, trying to calculate

whether they'd fit in her arms.


"No, I called for a launch when I realized how many of them I'd

bought."


"A police launch?"


"Of course. It would be difficult to justify taking a taxi," she said,

snapping off the stem of a carnation.


"What with the economy drive and all," Brunetti suggested.


"Exactly."


Three of the other bouquets ended up together in an enormous ceramic

vase, and the last, asters, went into a narrow crystal vase Brunetti

could not remember ever having seen. When all three vases were placed

to her satisfaction and the papers neatly folded and placed in the

basket she kept for paper to be recycled, she said, "Yes,

Commissario?"


"Have you managed to find out anything about the daughter?"


Signorina Elettra pulled a notebook from the side of her


/


desk and flipped it open. Reading from it, she began, "She was taken

out of school two years ago, and there's been no j trace of her, at

least no bureaucratic trace, since."


Taken out by whom?" 5


"Her father, apparently." |


"How did that happen?"


The school records show that her last day of school was the sixteenth

of November."


She looked at him, neither of them having to remind the other that

Signora Moro had been shot one week before.


"And?" he asked.


"And that's all. The forms on file say that the parents had decided to

place her in a private school."


"Where?" Brunetti asked.


"It's not necessary to mention that, I was told."


"And didn't they ask?" he demanded, his irritation clear. "Don't they

need to know where a child's going?"


The woman I spoke to said that all that's required is that the parents

complete and sign the proper forms, in duplicate Signorina Elettra

recited in what Brunetti assumed was the mechanical voice of whoever

she had spoken to.


"And a child's allowed to disappear and no questions asked?"


"I was told that the school's responsibility ends once the parents have

filled in the forms and the child's been taken from the school by one

of them."


"Just like that?" he asked.


Signorina Elettra opened her hands in a gesture meant to show her own

lack of responsibility. This woman said she wasn't working there when

the girl was withdrawn, so the best she could do was try to explain the

regulations to me." ,


"So where is she? A little girl can't just disappear," Brunetti *


insisted.


"She could be anywhere, I suppose," Signorina Elettra said, then added,

"But she's not in Siena."


Brunetti shot her an inquiring glance.


"I called the police there, and then I had a look through the records

of the school system. There's no record for her, nor for any child of

the Ferros."


"The mother's missing now, too Brunetti said and then went on to tell

her of his visit to her apartment and the inferences he had drawn from

the presence of the shirt.


Signorina Elettra's face paled and just as suddenly flushed. "His

shirt?" she asked then, before he could answer, repeated the question,

"His shirt?"


"Yes/ Brunetti answered. He started to ask her what she thought of

this, but when he took a closer look at her face, he realized there was

only one man this could cause her to think of, and he spoke to fill the

painful silence that the memory of his loss brought into the room. "Can

you think of a way to trace the child?" he finally said. When she

seemed not to hear him, he said, "There's got to be a way to find her.

Some central register of children enrolled in schools, perhaps?"


As if returning from a long distance, Signorina Elettra said in a very

soft voice, "Perhaps her medical records, or if she's in the Girl

Scouts."


Before she could suggest anything else, Brunetti cut her off by saying,

There are her grandparents. They've got to have some idea of where she

is."


"Do you know where they are?" Signorina Elettra asked with returning

interest.


"No, but both of the Moros are Venetian, so they should be here in the

city."


Till see what I can find out was the only remark she permitted herself.

Then: "By the way, sir, I found out about the girl who was supposedly

raped at the Academy."


"Yes? How?"


"Friends from the past was the only explanation she provided. When she

saw that she had Brunetti's attention, Signorina Elettra went on. "The

girl was thefidanzata of one of


the students, and he brought her back to his room one night. Somehow,

the captain of his class found out about it and went to the room. She

started screaming when he came in, and then someone called the police.

But there were never any charges and, from what I make of reading the

original report, probably no need for any."


"I see," he said, not bothering to ask her how she had found that

report so quickly. "Tantofumo, poco arrosto." As soon as he spoke he

was aware how his dismissal of the story would seem to her, and so

hastened to add, "But thank God for the girl."


Sounding not at all convinced by his piety, Signorina Elettra said

merely, "Indeed," and turned back to her computer.


Brunetti called down to the officers' room and asked where Pucetti was,

only to be told that he was out on patrol and wouldn't be back until

the following morning. After he hung up, he sat and wondered how long

it would take before his appreciation of Pucetti's intelligence would

begin to work to the young man's disadvantage. Most of the others,

even those arch-fools, Alvise and Riverre, were unlikely to turn

against him: the uniformed officers were pretty much devoid of

jealousy, as least so far as Brunetti could discern. Perhaps Vianello,

closer to them in rank and age, would have a better sense of this.


Someone like Scarpa, however, was bound to regard Pucetti with the same

suspicion with which he viewed Vianello. Even though Vianello had for

years kept his own counsel, it had been obvious to Brunetti that the

antipathy between the two men had been instant and fierce, on both

sides. Possible motives abounded: dislike between a southerner and a

northerner, between a single man and one so happily married, between

one who delighted in the


imposition of his will upon those around him and another |


who cared only to live peacefully. Brunetti had never been able to

make more sense of it than that the men felt a visceral antipathy for

one another.


He felt a flash of resentment that his professional life should be so

hampered by the complications of personal ,


animosity: why couldn't those who enforced the law be 4


above such things? He shook his head at his own crazy |


utopianism: next he would be longing for a philosopher-king. f


He had only to think of the current leader of government, >


however, for all hopes of the philosopher-king's arrival to wither and

die.


Further reflection was made impossible by the arrival of Alvise with

the latest tabulations of crime statistics, which he placed on

Brunetti's desk, saying that the Vice-Questore needed the finished

report by the end of the day and that he wanted figures he could

present to the press without embarrassment.


"What do you think that means, Alvise?" Brunetti allowed himself to

ask.


"That he solved them all, I'd guess, sir," Alvise answered

straight-faced. He saluted and left, leaving Brunetti with the

lingering suspicion that Lear was not the only man who had a wise fool

in his following.


He worked through lunch and well into the late afternoon juggling

figures and inventing new categories until he had something that would

both supply the truth and satisfy Patta. When he finally glanced at

his watch, he saw that it was after seven, surely time for him to

abandon these concerns and go home. On an impulse, he called Paola and

asked her if she felt like going out to dinner. She hesitated not an

instant, said only that she'd have to prepare something for the kids

and would meet him wherever he chose.


"Sommariva?" he asked.


"Oh my," she answered. "What brings this on?"


"I need a treat he said.


"Maria's cooking?" she asked.


"Your company he answered. Till meet you there at eight."


Almost three hours later, a lobster-filled Brunetti and his

champagne-filled consort climbed the stairs to their apartment, his

steps slowed by satisfying fullness, hers by the grappa she'd drunk

after dinner. Their arms linked, they were looking forward to bed, and

then to sleep.


The phone was ringing as he opened the door, and Brunetti for an

instant thought of not answering it, of leaving whatever it was until

the next morning. Had there been time to see that the children were in

their rooms and thus the call unrelated to their safety, he would have

let it ring on unanswered, but paternity asserted itself, and he

answered it on the fourth ring.


"It's me, sir Vianello said.


"What's wrong?" came Brunetti's instinctive response to Vianello's

voice.


"Moro's mother's been hurt."


"What?"


Sudden static filled the line, drowning out Vianello. When it came to

an end, Brunetti heard only, '.. . no idea who."


"Who what?" Brunetti demanded.


"Did it."


"Did what? I didn't hear you."


"She was hit by a car, sir. I'm in Mestre, at the hospital."


"What happened?"


"She was going to the train station in Mogliano, where she lives. At

least she was walking in that direction. A car hit her, knocked her

down and didn't stop."


"Did anyone see it?"


Two people. The police there talked to them, but neither was sure

about anything other than that it was light-coloured and the driver

might have been a woman."


Glancing at his watch, Brunetti asked, "When did this happen?"


"At about seven, sir. When the police saw that she was Fernando Moro's

mother, one of them remembered the boy's death and called the Questura.

They tried to get you, and then they called me."


Brunetti's glance fell on the answering machine. A tiny pulsating

light illuminated the one message that awaited him. "Has he been

told?"


They called him first, sir. She's a widow, and his name and address

were in her purse."


"And?"


"He came out." Both men thought of what that must have been for Moro,

but neither said anything.


"Where is he now?" Brunetti asked.


"In the hospital here."


"What do the doctors say?" Brunetti asked.


"Some cuts and bruises, but nothing broken. The car must just have

brushed her. But she's seventy-two, so the doctors decided to keep her

overnight." After a pause, Vianello added, "He just left."


There was a lengthy silence. Finally, Vianello said, in response to

Brunetti's unspoken question, "Yes, it might be a good idea. He was

very shaken."


Part of Brunetti's mind was aware that his instinctive desire to profit

from Moro's weakness was no less reptilian than Vianello's

encouragement that he do so. Neither idea stopped him. "How long

ago?" Brunetti asked.


"About five minutes. In a taxi."


Familiar sounds came from the back of the apartment: Paola moving about

in the bathroom, then going down the corridor to their bedroom.

Brunetti's imagination soared above the city and the mainland and

watched a taxi make its way through the empty streets of Mestre and

across the long causeway that led to Piazzale Roma. A single man

emerged,


reached back inside, shoving money at the driver, then turned away and

began to walk towards the iinbarcudero of the Number One. I'll go,"

Brunetti said and hung up.


Paola was already asleep when he looked into the bedroom, a stream of

light falling across her legs. He wrote a note then couldn't decide

where to leave it. Finally he propped the sheet of paper on the

answering machine, where the flickering light still called for

attention.


As Brunetti walked through the quiet city, his imagination took flight

again, but this time it observed a man in a dark suit and a grey

overcoat walking from San Polo toward the Accademia Bridge. As he

watched, the man crossed in front of the museum and made his way into

the narrow calling of Dorsoduro. At the end of the underpass that ran

beside the church of San Gregorio, he crossed the bridge to the broad

Riva in front of the Salute. Moro's house, off to his right, was dark,

though all the shutters were open. Brunetti moved along the canal and

stopped at the foot of the bridge leading back over the small canal and

to the door of Moro's house. From there, he would see Moro returning,

whether he walked, came by taxi or took the Number One. He turned and

looked across the still waters at the disorderly domes of San Marco and

the piebald walls of Palazzo Ducale, and thought of the peace their

beauty brought him. How strange it was: nothing more than the

arrangement of lines and colours, and he felt better than he had before

he looked at them.


He heard the throb of the motor of the vaporetto arriving; then saw the

prow emerge from behind the wall of a building. The noise moved into a

different key, and the boat glided up to the imbarcadero. The crewman

tossed out the rope with effortless accuracy and whipped it around the

metal stanchion in the centuries-old knot. A few people got off the

boat, none of them Moro. The metal scraped as the gate was pulled

shut; a careless flip and the rope came free, and the boat continued.


Another boat arrived twenty minutes later, but Moro wasn't on this one,

either. Brunetti was beginning to think the doctor might have decided

to go back to his mother's home in Mogliano when, off to the left, he

heard footsteps approaching. Moro emerged from the narrow calle

between the houses at the end of the tiny campo. Brunetti crossed the

bridge and stood at the bottom, just short of the door to Moro's

house.


The doctor came toward him, hands stuffed into the pockets of his

jacket, head lowered as if he had to take particular care of where he

placed his feet. When he was a few metres from Brunetti, he stopped

and reached first his left hand, then his right, into the pockets of

his trousers. On the second attempt, he pulled out a set of keys but

looked at them as if he didn't quite understand what they were or what

he was meant to do with them.


He raised his head then and saw Brunetti. There was no change in his

expression, but Brunetti was sure Moro recognized him.


Brunetti walked towards the other man, speaking before he thought,

surprised by the force of his own anger. "Are you going to let them

kill your wife and daughter, too?"


Moro took a step backwards, and the keys fell from his hand. He raised

one arm and shielded his face with it, as though Brunetti's words were

acid and he had to protect his eyes. But then, with a speed that

astonished Brunetti, Moro moved up to him and grabbed at his collar

with both hands. He misjudged the distance, and the nails of his

forefingers dug into the skin at the back of Brunetti's neck.


He pulled Brunetti towards him, yanking so savagely that he pulled him

a half-step forwards. Brunetti flung his hands out to the side in an

attempt to balance himself, but it was the strength of Moro's hands

that kept him from falling.


The doctor pulled him closer, shaking him the way a dog shakes a rat.

"Stay out of this," Moro hissed into his face,


sprinkling him with spittle. They didn't do it. What do you know?"


Brunetti, allowing Moro to support him, recovered his balance, and when

the doctor shoved him to arm's length, still holding tight, Brunetti

stepped back and flung his hands up, breaking the doctor's grip and

freeing himself. Instinctively he put his hands to his neck: his

fingers felt torn skin and the beginnings of pain.


He leaned forward until his face was dangerously close to the doctor's.

They'll find them. They found your mother. Do you want them to kill

them all?"


Again the doctor raised his hand, warding off Brunetti's words.

Robot-like, he raised the other hand, now a blind man, a trapped man,

seeking a place of safety. He turned away and staggered, stiff-kneed,

to the door of his house. Leaning brokenly against the wall, Moro

began to pat his pockets for his keys, which lay on the ground. He dug

his hands into his pockets, turning them out and scattering coins and

small pieces of paper around him. When no pockets remained unturned,

Moro lowered his head to his chest and began to sob.


Brunetti bent and picked up the keys. He walked over to the doctor and

took his right hand, which was hanging limply at his side. He turned

the doctor's palm up and placed the keys in it, then closed his fingers

over them.


Slowly, like a person long victim to arthritis, Moro pushed himself

away from the wall and put one key, then another, then another into the

lock until he found the right one. The lock turned noisily four times.

Moro pushed the door open and disappeared inside. Not bothering to

wait to see if lights went on inside, Brunetti turned away and started

to walk home.


Brunetti woke groggily the next morning to the dull sound of rain

against the bedroom windows and to Paola's absence from his side. She

was nowhere in the apartment, nor was there any sign of the children. A

glance at the clock showed him why: everyone had long since gone off to

the business of their day. When he went into the kitchen, he was

grateful to see that Paola had filled the Moka and left it on the

stove. He stared out the window while he waited for the coffee, and

when it was ready took it back into the living room. He stood looking

through the rain at the bell tower of San Polo, and sipped at his

coffee. When it was finished, he went back into the kitchen and made

more. This time, he came back and sat on the sofa, propped his

slippered feet on the table, and stared out the glass doors that led to

the terrace, not really aware of the rooftops beyond.


He tried to think of who 'they' could be. Moro had been too stunned by

Brunetti's attack to prepare a defence and so had made no attempt to

deny or pretend not to understand Brunetti's reference to this nameless

'they'. The first


possibility that occurred to Brunetti, as it would to anyone who knew

even the least bit about Moro's career, was someone at the health

services, the target of the Moro Report's accusation of

institutionalized corruption and greed. Closing his eyes, Brunetti

rested his head against the back of the sofa and tried to remember what

had become of the men who had been in charge of the provincial health

services at the time of the Moro Report.


One had disappeared into private law practice, another had retired, and

a third currently held a minor portfolio in the new government: in

charge of transportation safety or relief efforts for natural

disasters; Brunetti couldn't recall which. He did remember that, even

in the face of the scandal and indignation at the gross pilfering from

the public purse revealed by the report, the government's response had

proceeded with the stateliness of the Dead March from Saul. Years had

passed: the hospitals remained unbuilt, the official statistics

remained unchanged, and the men responsible for the deceit had moved on

quite undisturbed.


Brunetti realized that, in Italy, scandal had the same shelf life as

fresh fish: by the third day, both were worthless; one because it had

begun to stink, the other because it no longer did. Any punishment or

revenge that 'they' might have inflicted upon the author of the report

would have been exacted years ago: punishment that was delayed six

years would not dissuade other honest officials from calling attention

to the irregularities of government.


That possibility dismissed, Brunetti turned his thoughts to Moro's

medical career and tried to see the attacks on his family as the work

of a vengeful patient, only to dismiss that immediately. Brunetti

didn't believe that the purpose of what had happened to Moro was

punishment, otherwise he would have been attacked personally: it was

threat. The origin of the attacks against his family must lie in what

Moro was doing or had learned at the time his wife was shot. The

attacks, then, could make sense as a repeated and violent attempt to

prevent the publication of a second Moro Report. What struck Brunetti

as strange, when he reconsidered Moro's reaction the night before, was

not that the doctor had made no attempt to deny that 'they' existed so

much as his insistence that 'they' were not responsible for the

attacks.


Brunetti took a sip of his coffee but found it was cold; and it was

only then that he heard the phone ringing. He set the cup down and

went into the hall to answer it.


"Brunetti/ he said.


"It's me Paola said. "Are you still in bed?"


"No, I've been up a long time." I've called you three times in the

last half-hour. Where were you, in the shower?"


"Yes/ Brunetti lied.


"Are you lying?"


"Yes."


"What have you been doing?" Paola asked with real concern.


"Sitting and looking out the window."


"Well, it's good to know your day has started out as a productive one.

Sitting and looking or sitting and looking and thinking?"


"And thinking."


"What about."


"Moro."


"And?"


"And I think I see something I didn't see before."


"Do you want to tell me?" she asked, but he could hear the haste in

her voice.


"No. I need to think about it a little more."


Tonight, then?"


"Yes."


She paused a moment and then said, using a voice straight


out of Brazilian soap opera, "We've got unfinished business from last

night, big boy."


With a jolt, his body remembered that unfinished business, but before

he could speak, she laughed and hung up.


He left the apartment half an hour later, wearing a pair of

rubber-soled brogues and sheltered under a dark umbrella. His pace was

slowed by the umbrella, which caused him to duck and bob his way

between the other people on the street. The rain appeared to have

lessened, not eliminated, the streams of tourists. How he wished there

were some other way he could get to work, some means to avoid being

trapped in the narrow zigs and zags of Ruga Rialto. He cut right just

after Sant' Aponal and walked down to the Canal Grande. As he emerged

from the underpass, a traghetto pulled up to the Riva. After the

passengers had got off, he stepped aboard, handing the gondoliere one

of the Euro coins he still found unfamiliar, hoping it would be

sufficient. The young man handed him back a few coins, and Brunetti

moved to the rear of the gondola, allowing his knees to turn to rubber

and thus help maintain his balance as the boat bobbed around on the

water.


When there were thirteen people, one of them with a sodden German

Shepherd, standing in the gondola, all trying to huddle under the

umbrellas spread above their heads in an almost unbroken shield, the

gondolieri shoved off and took them quickly to the other side. Even in

this rain, Brunetti could see people standing without umbrellas at the

top of the bridge, their backs to him, while other people took their

photos.


The gondola slid up to the wooden steps, and everyone filed off.

Brunetti waited while the gondoliere at the front handed a woman's

shopping cart up to her. One of its wheels caught on the side of the

steps and it tilted back toward the gondoliere, who caught it by the

handle and handed it up. Suddenly the dog jumped back into the boat

and picked up


something that once had been a tennis ball. With it firmly between his

jaws, he leaped back on to the dock and ran after his master.


It occurred to Brunetti that he had just witnessed a series of crimes.

The number of people in the boat had exceeded the legal limit. There

was probably a law stating that umbrellas had to be furled while they

crossed the canal, but he wasn't sure and so let that one go. The dog

had worn no muzzle and wasn't on a leash. Two people speaking German

had been given change only when they asked for it.


On the way up to his office, Brunetti stopped in the officers' room and

asked Pucetti to come upstairs. When they were both seated, Brunetti

asked, "What else have you learned?" Obviously surprised by the

question, Pucetti said, "You mean about the school, sir?"


"Of course."


"You're still interested?"


"Yes. Why wouldn't I be?"


"But I thought the investigation was finished."


"Who told you that?" Brunetti asked, though he had a good f idea.


"Lieutenant Scarpa, sir."


"When?"


Pucetti glanced aside, trying to remember. "Yesterday, sir. He came

into the office and told me that the Moro case was no longer active and

that I had been assigned to Tronchetto."


Tronchetto?" Brunetti asked, failing to hide his astonishment that a

police officer should be sent to patrol a parking lot. "What for?"


"We've had reports about those guys who stand at the entrance and offer

tourists boat rides into the city."


"Reports from whom?" Brunetti asked.


There was a complaint from someone at the American Embassy in Rome. He

said he paid two hundred Euros for a ride to San Marco."


"What was he doing at Tronchetto?"


"Trying to park, sir. And that's when one of those guys with the white

hats and fake uniforms told him where to park and offered to show him a

taxi that would take him into the city, right to his hotel."


"And he paid?"


Pucetti shrugged and said, "You know what Americans are like, sir. He

didn't understand what was going on. So yes, he paid, but when he told

the people at the hotel, they said he'd been cheated. Turns out he's

something important at the Embassy, so he called Rome, and then they

called us and complained. And that's why we've been going out there,

to keep it from happening again."


"How long have you been doing this?"


The went out yesterday, sir, and I'm due there in an hour," Pucetti

said; then, in response to Brunetti's expression, he added, "It was an

order."


Brunetti decided to make no observation on the young officer's

docility. Instead he said, The investigation of the Moro boy's death

is still open, so you can forget about Tronchetto. I want you to go

back and talk to one of the boys, named Ruffo. I think you spoke to

him already." Brunetti had seen the boy's name in Pucetti's written

report and recalled the young officer's comment that the boy had seemed

unduly nervous during the interview. Pucetti nodded at the name and

Brunetti added, "Not at the school, if that's possible. And not while

you're in uniform."


"Yes, sir. That is, no, sir," Pucetti said, then quickly asked, "And

the lieutenant?"


Till deal with him Brunetti answered.


Pucetti instantly got to his feet and said, Till go over there as soon

as I change, sir."


That left Brunetti with Lieutenant Scarpa. He toyed with the idea of

summoning the lieutenant to his office but, thinking it better to

appear before him unannounced, went


down two flights of stairs to the office Scarpa had insisted he be

given. The room had for years functioned as a storeroom, a place where

officers could leave umbrellas and boots and coats to be used in the

event of a change in the weather or the sudden arrival of ac qua alia.

Some years ago, a sofa had appeared as if by magic, and since then

officers on the night shift had been known to steal an hour's sleep.

Legend had it that a female commissa rio had been introduced to the

pleasures of adultery on that very sofa. Three years ago, however,

Vice-Questore Patta had ordered the boots, umbrellas and coats removed;

the next day the sofa disappeared, replaced by a desk made of a plate

of mirrored glass supported by thick metal legs. No one lower than

commissa rio had a private office at the Questura, but Vice Questore

Patta had installed his assistant behind that glass desk. There had

been no official discussion of his rank, though there had certainly

been more than ample comment.


Brunetti knocked at the door and entered in response to Scarpa's

shouted "Avantil' There ensued a precarious moment during which

Brunetti observed Scarpa deal with the arrival of one of his superiors.

Instinct asserted itself, and Scarpa braced his hands on the edge of

his desk as if to push himself back and get to his feet. But then

Brunetti saw him react, not only to the realization of just which

superior it was, but also to the territorial imperative, and the

lieutenant transformed the motion into one that did no more than propel

himself higher in his chair. "Good morning, Commissario," he said.

"May I help you?"


Ignoring what Scarpa tried to make a gracious wave towards the chair in

front of his desk, Brunetti remained standing near the door and said,

"I'm putting Pucetti on a special assignment."


Scarpa's face moved in something that was perhaps meant to be a smile.

"Pucetti is already on special assignment, Commissario."


Tronchetto, you mean?"


"Yes. What's going on there is very harmful to the image of the

city."


Telling his better self to ignore the dissonance between the sentiments

and the Palermitano accent in which they were voiced, Brunetti

answered, "I'm not sure I share your concern for the image of the city,

Lieutenant, so I'm reassigning him."


Again, that motion of the lips. "And you have the approval of the

Vice-Questore, of course?"


"I hardly think a detail as insignificant as where a police officer is

assigned is of much interest to the Vice-Questore/ Brunetti answered.


"On the contrary, Commissario, I think the Vice-Questore is deeply

interested in anything that concerns the police in this city."


Tired of this, Brunetti asked, What does that mean?"


"Just what I said, sir. That the Vice-Questore will be interested to

learn about this." Like a tenor with register problems, Scarpa could

not control his voice as it wobbled between civility and menace.


"Meaning you intend to tell him about it?" Brunetti asked.


"Should the occasion arise," Scarpa answered blandly.


"Of course," Brunetti answered with equal blandness.


"Is that all I can do for you, Commissario?"


"Yes/ Brunetti said and left the office before giving in to the

temptation to say something else. Brunetti knew almost nothing about

Lieutenant Scarpa or what motivated him: money was probably a safe

guess. This thought called to mind a remark Anna Comnena had made

about Robert Guiscard: "Once a man has seized power, his love of money

displays exactly the same characteristics as gangrene, for gangrene,

once established in a body, never rests until it has invaded and

corrupted the whole of it."


An old woman lay injured in the hospital in Mestre, and


he had to concern himself with turf battles with Patta's I


creature and with the attempt to understand the lieutenant's motives.

He walked up the stairs, inwardly fuming about


Scarpa, but by the time he got back to his office he had f accepted the

fact that his real anger was directed at his own "


failure to foresee the attack on Moro's mother. It mattered I


little to Brunetti that this was entirely unrealistic; somehow, j he

should have realized the danger and done something to * '


protect her.


He called the hospital and, adopting the harsh, authoritarian voice he

had learned to use when dealing with mindless bureaucracies, announced

his rank and demanded to be connected to the ward where Signora Moro

was being treated. There was some delay in transferring the call, and

when the nurse on duty spoke to him, she was helpful and cooperative

and told him that the doctor had advised that Signora Moro be kept

until the next day, when she could go home. No, there was no serious

injury: she was being kept an extra day in consideration of her age

rather than her condition.


Braced by this comforting sign of humanity, Brunetti thanked her, ended

the call, and immediately called the police in Mogliano. The officer

in charge of the investigation told him that a woman had come into the

Questura that morning and admitted she had been driving the car that

struck Signora Moro. Panicking, she had driven away, but after a

sleepless night in which she had been the victim of both fear and

remorse, she had come to the police to confess.


When Brunetti asked the other officer if he believed the woman, he

received an astonished, "Of course', before the man said he had to get

back to work and hung up.


So Moro was right when he insisted that 'they' had had nothing to do

with the attack on his mother. Even that word, 'attack', Brunetti

realized, was entirely his own invention.


Why, then, Moro's rage at Brunetti for having suggested it? More

importantly, why his state of anguished despair last night, far out of

proportion for a man who had been told that his mother was not

seriously injured?


Awareness that he had done something else to merit Lieutenant Scarpa's

enmity should have troubled Brunetti, but he could not bring himself to

care: there were no degrees to implacable antipathy. He regretted only

that Pucetti might have to bear the brunt of Scarpa's anger, for the

lieutenant was not a man likely to aim a blow, at least not an open

one, at people above him. He wondered whether other people behaved

like this, deaf and blind to the real demands of their professions in

their heedless pursuit of success and personal power, though Paola had

long assured him that the various struggles that absorbed the

Department of English Literature at the university were far more savage

than anything described in Beowulf or the bloodier Shakespearean

tragedies. He knew that ambition was accepted as a natural human

trait, had for decades observed others striving to achieve what they

determined to be success. Much as he knew these desires were judged to

be perfectly normal, he remained puzzled by the passion and energy of

their endeavours. Paola had once observed that he had been born with

some


essential piece missing, for he seemed incapable of desiring anything

other than happiness. Her remark had troubled him until she explained

that it was one of the reasons she had married him.


Musing on this, he entered Signorina Elettra's office. When she looked

up, he said without introduction, "I'd like to learn about the people

at the Academy."


"What, precisely, would you like to know?"


He considered this, then finally said, "I think what I'd really like to

know is whether any of them is capable of killing that boy and, if so,

for what reason."


There could be many reasons," she answered, then added, "If, that is,

you want to believe that he was murdered."


"No, I don't want to believe that. But if he was, then I want to know

why."


"Are you curious about the boys or the teachers?"


"Either. Both."


"I doubt it could have been both."


"Why?" he asked.


"Because they'd probably have different motives."


"Such as?"


"I haven't explained myself well," she began, shaking her head. "I

think the teachers would do it for serious reasons, adult reasons."


"For instance?"


"Danger to their careers. Or to the school."


"And the boys?"


"Because he was a pain in the ass."


"Seems a pretty trivial reason to kill someone."


"Viewed from a different perspective, most reasons for killing people

are pretty trivial."


He was forced to agree. After a while he asked, "In what way could he

have been a pain in the ass?"


"God knows. I don't have any idea what bothers boys that age. Someone

who is too aggressive, or not aggressive


enough. Someone who is too smart and makes the others embarrassed. Or

shows off, or ..."


Brunetti cut her off. Those still seem like trivial reasons. Even for

teenagers."


Not the least offended, she said, That's the best I can come up with

Nodding at the keyboard, she said, "Let me take a look and see what I

can find."


"Where will you look?"


"Class lists and then members of their families. Faculty lists and

then the same. Then cross-check them with, well, with other things."


"Where did you get those lists?"


Her intake of breath was stylishly long. "It's not that I have them,

sir, but that I can get them." She looked at him and waited for his

comment; outflanked, Brunetti thanked her and asked her to bring him

whatever information she could find as soon as she had it.


In his office, he set himself to attempting to recall anything he'd

heard or read, over the years, about the Academy. When nothing came,

he turned his reflections to the military at large, recalling that most

of the faculty were former officers of one branch or other.


A memory slipped in from somewhere, tantalizing him and refusing to

come into focus. Like a sharpshooter straining to see at night, he

addressed his attention, not to the target that wouldn't appear, but to

whatever stood beside or beyond it. Something about the military,

about young men in the military.


The memory materialized: an incident from some years before, when two

soldiers paratroopers, he thought had been directed to jump from a

helicopter somewhere in, he thought, former Yugoslavia. Not knowing

that the helicopter was hovering a hundred metres above the ground,

they had jumped to their death. Not knowing, and not having been told

by the other men in the helicopter, who


had known but were members of a military corps different from their

own. And with that memory came another one, of a young man found dead

at the bottom of a parachute jump, perhaps the victim of a nighttime

hazing prank gone wrong. To the best of his knowledge, neither case

had ever been resolved, no satisfactory explanation provided for the

completely unnecessary deaths of these three young men.


He recalled, as well, a morning at breakfast some years ago when Paola

looked up from the newspaper which contained an account of the

country's then-leader offering to send Italian troops to aid an ally in

some bellicose endeavour. "He's going to send troops," she said. "Is

that an offer or a threat, do you think?"


Only one of Brunetti's close friends had opted for a career in the

military, and they had lost touch over the last few years, so he did

not want to call him. What he would ask him, anyway, Brunetti had no

idea. If the Army were really as corrupt and incompetent as everyone

seemed to believe it was? No, hardly the question he could ask, at

least not of a serving general.


That left his friends in the press. He called one in Milano but when

the machine answered, he chose not to leave either his name or a

message. The same happened when he called another friend in Rome. The

third time, when he called Beppe Avisani, in Palermo, the phone was

answered on the second ring.


"Avisani."


"Ciao, Beppe. It's me, Guido."


"Ah, good to hear your voice," Avisani said, and for a few minutes they

exchanged the sort of information friends give and get when they

haven't spoken for some time, their voices perhaps made formal by a

shared awareness that they usually now spoke to one another only when

one of them needed information.


After everything that had to be said about families had been said,

Avisani asked, "What can I tell you?"


"I'm looking into the death of the Moro boy," Brunetti answered and

waited for the reporter to answer.


"Not suicide, then?" he asked, not bothering with polite pieties.


That's what I want to know," Brunetti answered.


Without hesitation, Avisani volunteered. "If it wasn't suicide, then

the obvious reason is the father, something to do with him."


"I'd got that far, Beppe," Brunetti said with an entire absence of

sarcasm.


"Of course, you would. Sorry."


"The report came out too long ago," Brunetti said, certain that a man

who had spent twenty years as a political reporter would follow his

thinking and also dismiss the report as a possible cause. "Do you know

what he worked on while he was in Parliament?"


There was a long pause as Avisani followed the trail of Brunetti's

question. "You're probably right," he said at last, then, "Can you

hold on a minute?"


"Of course. Why?"


T've got that stuff in a file somewhere."


"In the computer?" Brunetti asked.


"Where else?" the reporter asked with a laugh. "In a drawer?"


Brunetti laughed in return, as though he'd meant the question as a

joke.


"Just a minute Avisani said. Brunetti heard a click as the phone was

set down on a hard surface.


He looked out of the window as he waited, making no attempt to impose

order upon the information that tumbled around in his mind. He lost

track of time, though it was far more than a minute before Avisani was

back.


"Guido?" he asked, 'you still there?"


"Yes."


"I haven't got much on him. lie was there for three years, well, a bit

less than that, before he resigned, but he was kept pretty well out of

sight."


"Kept?"


The party he ran for chose him because he was famous at the time and

they knew they could win with him, but after he was elected and they

got an idea of what his real ideas were, they kept him as far out of

sight as they could."


Brunetti had seen it happen before as honest people were elected into a

system they hoped to reform, only to find themselves gradually absorbed

by it, like insects in a Venus' fly-trap. Because Avisani had seen far

more of it than he, Brunetti drew a pad towards him and said only, "I'd

like to know what committees he worked on." ,v


"Are you looking for what I think you are someone he might have

crossed?"


"Yes."


Avisani made a long noise that Brunetti thought was meant to be

speculative. "Let me give you what I have. There was a pension

committee for farmers," Avisani began, then dismissed it with a casual,

"Nothing there. They're all nonentities." And then, The one that

oversaw sending all that stuff to Albania."


"Was the Army involved in that?" Brunetti asked.


"No. I think it was done by private charities. Caritas, organizations

like that."


"What else?"


The Post Office."


Brunetti snorted.


"And military procurement," Avisani said with undisguised interest.


"What does that mean?"


There was a pause before he answered, "Probably examining the contracts

with the companies that supply the military."


"Examining or deciding?" Brunetti asked.


"Examining, I'd say. It was really only a subcommittee, which means

they'd have no more power than to make recommendations to the real

committee. You think that's it?" he asked.


"I'm not sure there is an "it"," Brunetti answered evasively, only now

forcing himself to recall that his friend was a member of the press.


With laboured patience, Avisani asked, "I'm asking as a curious friend,

Guido, not as a reporter."


Brunetti laughed in relief. "It's a better guess than the postmen.

They're not particularly violent."


"No, that's only in America," Avisani said.


Agreement's awkwardness fell between them, both of them aware of the

conflict between their professions and their friendship. Finally

Avisani said, "You want me to follow up on this?"


At a loss as to how to phrase it, Brunetti said, "If you can do it

delicately."


"I'm still alive because I do things delicately, Guido," he said

without any attempt at humour, gave a farewell not distinguished by its

friendliness, and hung up.


Brunetti called down to Signorina Elettra, and when she answered, said,

"I'd like you to add one more thing to your .. ." he began, but was at

a loss for a name for what Signorina Elettra did. To your research,"

he said.


"Yes, sir?" she asked.


"Military procurement."


"Could you be a bit more precise?"


"Getting and spending," he began, and a line Paola was forever quoting

rushed towards him. He ignored it and continued, "For the military. It

was one of the committees Moro was on."


"Oh, my," she exclaimed. "However did that happen?"


Hearing her unfeigned astonishment, Brunetti wondered


how long it would take him to explain her reaction to a foreigner. Her

response presumed Moro's honesty, and her astonishment that an honest

man had been placed on any committee that would make decisions that

might somehow affect the allocation of significant amounts of

government funds.


"I've no idea he answered. "Perhaps you could see who else served on

the committee with him."


"Certainly, sir. Government records are very easy to access she said,

leaving him to speculate about the precise level of criminality lurking

in that verb.


He looked at his watch and asked, "Should I go and have lunch or should

I wait?"


"Lunch, sir, I think she advised and was gone.


He walked down to Testiere, where the owner would always find him a

place, and had a fish antipasto and then a piece of grilled tuna Bruno

swore was fresh. For all the attention Brunetti paid to it, the fish

could have been frozen or freeze-dried. At any other time, ignoring a

meal this fine would have shamed Brunetti: today he could not drag

himself away from his attempt to discover the connection between Moro's

professional life and the suffering inflicted upon his family, and so

the meal remained eaten but untasted.


He stopped at the door to Signorina Elettra's office and found her

standing at her window, looking off down the canal that led toward the

Bacino. Her attention was so absorbed in whatever she was watching

that she didn't hear him come in, and he stopped, reluctant to startle

her. Her arms were crossed on her breast, and she stood with her

shoulder leaning against the window frame, one leg crossed in front of

the other. He saw her in profile and as he watched, she lowered her

head and closed her eyes for a heartbeat longer than necessary. She

opened them, took a breath so deep he saw her breasts rise, and turned

away from the window. And saw him watching her.


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Three seconds passed. Paola had once told him that the Irish often

said, in moments when consolation was necessary, "I'm sorry for your

trouble', and it was on his lips to say this when she took a step

towards her desk, tried to smile, and said, "I've got everything but

said it in the voice of someone who had nothing.


Three more seconds passed and then he joined her at her desk, in

unspoken agreement that they would ignore what had just happened.


He saw two piles of papers. Standing, she pointed to the first, saying

as she did, That's a list of students who have fathers in the military

or the government that's the only thing I checked about the students.

And under it is a list of the faculty, which branch of the military

they served in, and the final rank they held. And beneath that a list

of the men who served on the committee for military procurement with

Dottor Moro."


Curiosity overcame good sense and he asked, "All right. Please tell me

where you got all of this." When she didn't answer, he held up his

right hand and said, "I promise, on the head of anyone in my family you

choose to name, that I will never repeat what you tell me, will forget

it the instant you tell me, will not allow Lieutenant Scarpa, no matter

what means he employs, ever, to wrest it from me."


She considered this. "What if he makes horrible threats?"


"Like what, invites me for a drink?"


"Worse. Dinner."


The shall be strong."


She capitulated. There's a way to access military personnel files. All

you need is the code and then the service number of any member."

Because she was volunteering this, Brunetti did not ask how she got the

code or the numbers. "Parliament is too easy," she said with contempt.

"A child could get in." He assumed she was talking about the computer

files, not the building.


"And the lists from the schools?" he asked.


She gave him a long, speculative look, and he nodded, renewing his vow

of silence. She said, Tucetti stole them when he was there and gave

them to me in case they might be useful."


"Have you had time to study them?"


"A little. Some names occur on more than one list."


"For example?"


She pulled a sheet of paper from the first pile and pointed to two

names that she had already highlighted in yellow. "Maggiore Marcello

Filippi and Colonello Giovanni Toscano."


Tell me he said. "It's faster."


"The Maggiore was in the Army for twenty-seven years and retired three

years ago. For the six years immediately before his retirement, he was

in charge of the procurement office for the Paratroopers. His son is a

third-year student at the Academy." She pointed to the second name.

"The Colonello served as military adviser to the parliamentary

committee on which Moro served. He now teaches at the Academy. He was

in Paris, attending a seminar, during the week the boy died."


"Isn't that something of a fall from grace, to go from a job in

Parliament to teaching at a military academy in the provinces?"


The Colonello retired after twenty-two years of military service under

something of a cloud," Signorina Elettra said. "Or at least," she

immediately corrected herself, 'that's the sense I get from reading the

internal files."


Internal files, Brunetti repeated to himself. Where would she stop?

"What do they say?"


That certain members of the committee registered less than total

satisfaction with the Colonello's performance. One of them even went

so far as to suggest that the Colonello was not at all impartial in the

advice he provided the committee."


"Moro?"


"Yes."


"Ah."


"Indeed."


"Less than impartial in what way?" Brunetti asked.


"It didn't say, though there's not far to look, is there?"


"No, I suppose not." If the Colonello were partial in a way which the

committee did not like, it would have to be in favour of the firms

which supplied the military, and the men who owned them. Brunetti's

atavistic cynicism suggested here that it might just as easily mean

that Toscano was in the pay of companies different from those making

payments to the parliamentarians on the committee. The marvel here was

not that he was partial why else seek a position like this but that he

should have been .. . Brunetti stopped himself from saying the word

'caught', even in his mind. It was remarkable that he should have been

forced to retire, for Brunetti could not imagine that a man in this

position would go quietly. How obvious or excessive must his

partiality have been if it had led to his retirement?


"Is he Venetian, the Colonello?" he asked.


"No, but his wife is."


"When did they come here?"


"Two years ago. Upon his retirement


"Do you have any idea of how much he earns as a teacher at the

Academy?"


Signorina Elettra pointed to the paper again. "All of their salaries

are listed to the right of their names."


"Presumably, he's also receiving his military pension," Brunetti

said.


That's listed, as well she answered.


Brunetti looked at the paper and saw that the sum of the Colonello's

pension plus his salary at the Academy was well in excess of his own

salary as a commissa rio "Not bad, I'd say."


"They struggle though, I suppose," she observed.


The wife?"


"Rich."


"What does he teach?"


"History and Military Theory."


"And does he have a particular political stance that he brings to the

teaching of history?"


She smiled at the delicacy of his phrasing and answered, "I can't

answer that yet, sir. I've got a friend whose uncle teaches

Mathematics there, and he's promised to ask him."


"It's probably a safe guess what his ideas would be she went on, 'but

it's always best to check."


He nodded. Neither of them had any illusions about the view of

politics and, for that fact, history likely to be held by a man who had

spent twenty-two years in the military. But, like Signorina Elettra,

Brunetti thought it would be best to be certain.


"And the two men?" he asked. "Did they ever serve together?"


She smiled again, as if this time pleased with his perspicacity, and

pulled towards her the second pile of papers. "It would seem that, at

the same time as the Colonello was giving his advice to the

parliamentary committee, the newly retired Maggiore was on the board of

directors of Edilan-Forma."


"Which is?" he asked.


"A Ravenna-based company which supplies uniforms, boots and backpacks

to the military, along with other things."


"What other things?"


"I've not been able to break into their computer yet," she said,

clearly still in no doubt that this entire conversation was protected

by the same dispensation. "But it looks like they supply anything

soldiers can wear or carry. It would seem, as well, that they serve as

subcontractors for companies that sell food and drink to the

military."


"And all of this means?" Brunetti asked.


"Millions, sir, millions and millions. It's a money fountain,


or it could be. After all, the military spends about seventeen billion

Euros a year."


"But that's insane he blurted out.


"Not for anyone who has a chance to take any of it home, it's not she

said.


"Edilan-Forma?"


"Even so she replied, and then returned to the information she had

gathered. "At one point, the committee examined the contracts with

Edilan-Forma because one of the committee members had raised questions

about them."


Though he barely thought it necessary, Brunetti asked, "Moro?"


She nodded.


"What sort of questions?"


"The parliamentary minutes mention pricing for a number of items, also

the quantities ordered she said.


"And what happened?"


"When the committee member resigned, the questions were not

repeated."


"And the contracts?"


They were all renewed."


Was he mad, he wondered, to find this so normal and so simple to

understand? Or were they all mad, everyone in the country, in a way

that demanded the papers lying on Signorina Elettra's desk could be

read in only one way? The public purse was a grab bag, and public

spoil the supreme gift of office. Moro, stupid and transparently

honest Moro, had dared to question this. Brunetti was no longer in any

doubt that the answer to Moro's questions had been given, not to him,

but to his family.


"If you haven't already begun it, could you take a closer look at

Toscano and Filippi?"


"I was just beginning that when you came in, sir she said. "But my

friend in Rome, the one who works in military records, has been sent to

Livorno for a few days, so I won't


have access to their records until the end of the week."


Failing to remind her that she had been standing at the window, looking

out sadly at her past or her future, when he came in, not beginning to

work on anything, Brunetti thanked her and went back to his office.


By force of will, Brunetti kept himself at the Questura until the

normal time for leaving. He occupied himself with reading and

initialling reports, then decided that he would read only every second

one, then every third, though he scrupulously wrote a careful "GB' on

the bottom of all of them, even the unread ones. As his eyes ran over

the words, the columns of numbers, the endless spew of facts and

figures that were as closely related to reality as Anna Anderson to

Tsar Nicholas II, Brunetti's thoughts remained anchored to Moro.


Just before leaving, he called Avisani in Palermo.


Again, the journalist answered with his name.


"It's me, Beppe," Brunetti said.


"It's not even a day, Guide. Give me some time, will you?" the

journalist said waspishly.


"I'm not calling to nag, Beppe. Believe me. It's that I want to add

two names to the list Brunetti began. Before Avisani could refuse, he

continued, "Colonello Giovanni Toscano and Maggiore Marcello

Filippi."


After a long time, Avisani said, "Well, well, well. If there's salt,

there's pepper; oil, there's vinegar; smoke, fire."


"And Toscano, Filippi, I assume?" Brunetti asked.


"Very much so. How is it you've stumbled on those two?"


"Moro," Brunetti said simply. They're both tied to the committee Moro

was working on when he left Parliament."


"Ah yes. Procurement/ Avisani said, stretching the word out as if

better to enjoy the sound of it.


"Do you know anything?" Brunetti asked, though he was sure his friend

did.


"I know that Colonello Toscano was encouraged to leave his position as

consultant to the parliamentary committee and soon after that decided

to retire from the Army."


"And Filippi?"


"My sense is that the Maggiore decided his position had become too

obvious."


"What position was that?"


"Husband to the cousin of the president of the company from whom the

Paratroopers obtained most of their supplies."


"Edilan-Forma?" Brunetti inquired.


"Haven't you been a busy boy?" Avisani asked by way of compliment.


Honesty demanded that Brunetti make it clear that it was Signorina

Elettra who had been a busy girl, but he thought it best not to reveal

this to a member of the press. "Have you written about this?" Brunetti

asked.


Time and time again, Guido," Avisani answered with heavy resignation.


"And?"


"And what are people supposed to do? Pretend to be surprised, pretend

this isn't the way they do business, too? Remember what that

television comic said when they started the Mani Pulite

investigation?"


That we were all guilty of corruption and should all spend


a few days in jail?" Brunetti asked, remembering Beppe Grille's

frenetic admonition to his fellow citizens. He was a comic, Grillo,

and so people were free to laugh, though what he said that night had

been in no way funny.


"Yes," Avisani said, pulling back Brunetti's attention. "I've been

writing articles about this for years, about this and about other

agencies of the government that exist primarily to siphon money to

friends and relatives. And no one cares." He waited for Brunetti to

react, and then repeated, "No one cares because they all think that,

sooner or later, they might get a chance at some of the easy money, so

it's in their best interests that the system stay the way it is. And

it does."


Since Brunetti knew this to be the case, there was no reason to object

to his friend's remarks. Returning to Avisani's original reaction, he

asked, "Is that the only way they're linked?"


"No. They graduated in the same class from the Academy in Modena/


"And after that?" Brunetti asked.


"I don't know. I doubt it's important. What is, is that they knew one

another well and that both were eventually involved in procurement."


"And both retired?"


"Yes, pretty much at the same time."


"Where's Filippi, do you know?" Brunetti asked.


"I think he lives in Verona. You want me to find out about him?"


"Yes."


"How much?"


"Whatever you can."


"And I suppose you'll pay me the same as you always do?" Avisani asked

with a laugh.


"You don't want to eat my wife's cooking?" Brunetti asked with fake

indignation, then, before Avisani could answer,


Brunetti said, "I don't want you to go to any trouble with this,

Beppe."


This time it was the journalist who laughed. "Guido, if I worried

about going to trouble, or, for that matter, getting into trouble, I

doubt I could do this job."


Thanks, Beppe," Brunetti said, and the warmth of the other man's

parting laugh told him that their friendship remained as strong as

ever.


He went downstairs, and though he tried to resist the siren lure of

Signorina Elettra and her computer, he failed. There was no light on

in her office, and the darkened screen of the computer suggested she

had not yet found what he had asked her to get. There was nothing else

for him to do, short of rifling through her desk, so he went home to

his family and his dinner.


The next morning he was at the Questura before eight, and when his

detour past Signorina Elettra's office showed that she was not yet in,

he continued to the officers' room, where he found Pucetti at a desk,

reading a magazine. The young man got to his feet when he saw

Brunetti. "Good morning, Commissario. I was hoping you'd come in

early."


"What have you got?" Brunetti asked. He was vaguely conscious of

motion behind him, and he saw its reflection on Pucetti's face, from

which the smile disappeared. "Only these forms, sir he said, reaching

across his desk to the one beside it and gathering up two stacks of

papers. "I think they need your signature," he said, his voice

neutral.


Imitating his tone, Brunetti said, "I've got to go down to see Bocchese

for a minute. Could you take them up and put them on my desk for

me?"


"Certainly, sir," Pucetti said, setting one stack, and then the second,

on top of his magazine and tapping them together to straighten the

edges. When he picked them up, the magazine had disappeared.


Brunetti turned towards the door and found it blocked by


Lieutenant Scarpa. "Good morning, Lieutenant/ Brunetti said neutrally.

"Is there something I can do for you?"


"No, sir the lieutenant answered. "I wanted to speak to Pucetti/


Brunetti's face lit up with grateful surprise. "Ah, thank you for

reminding me, Lieutenant: there's something I need to ask Pucetti

about." He turned to the young man. "You can wait for me in my

office, Officer. I won't be a minute with Bocchese." With a friendly

smile at the lieutenant, Brunetti said, "You know how Bocchese loves to

get an early start suggesting this was common knowledge at the

Questura, despite the well-known truth that Bocchese spent the first

hour of his day reading La Gazzetta del lo Sport and using his email

address at the Questura to place bets in three countries.


Silently, the lieutenant moved aside to let his superior pass.

Brunetti waited just outside the door until Pucetti joined him and then

closed the door of the office behind them.


"Oh, I suppose Bocchese can wait a few minutes Brunetti said

resignedly. When they got to his office, Brunetti closed the door

behind them and while he took off his overcoat and hung it in the

closet, said, What did you learn?"


Pucetti kept the papers tucked under, his arm and said, "I think

there's something wrong with the Ruffo boy, sir. I went over there

yesterday and hung around in the bar down the street from the school,

and when he came in I said hello. I offered him a coffee, but it

seemed to me he was nervous about talking to me."


"Or being seen talking to you Brunetti suggested. When Pucetti agreed,

Brunetti asked, "What makes you think there's something wrong with

him?"


"I think he's been in a fight." Not waiting for Brunetti to question

him, Pucetti went on. "Both of his hands were scraped, and the

knuckles of his right hand were swollen. When he saw me looking at

them, he tried to hide them behind his back."


"What else?"


"He moved differently, as though he were stiff."


"What did he tell you?" asked Brunetti as he sat down behind his

desk.


"He said he's had time to think about it and he realizes now that maybe

it was suicide, after all," Pucetti said.


Brunetti propped his elbows on his desk and rested his chin on his

folded hands. Silently, he waited to hear not only what Pucetti had

been told but what he thought of it.


In the face of his superior's silence, Pucetti ventured, "He doesn't

believe that, sir, at least I don't think he does."


"Why?"


"He sounded frightened, and he sounded as if he were repeating

something he'd had to memorize. I asked him why he thought it might

have been suicide, and he said it was because Moro had been acting

strangely in the last few weeks." Pucetti paused, then added, "Just

the opposite of what he told me the first time. It was as if he needed

some sign from me that I believed him."


"And did you give it to him?" Brunetti asked.


"Of course, sir. If that's what he needs to feel safe, and I think it

is, then it's better he have it."


"Why's that, Pucetti?"


"Because it will cause him to relax, and when he relaxes he'll be even

more frightened when we talk to him again."


"Here, do you mean?"


"Downstairs, yes. And with someone big in the room with us."


Brunetti looked up at the young man and smiled.


The obvious choice to serve the role of enforcer was Vianello, a man

who had perfected the art of disguising his essential good nature

behind expressions that could vary from displeased to savage. He was

not, however, to be given the chance to employ his repertory on Cadet

Ruffo, for when the



Inspector and Pucetti arrived at the San Martino Academy an hour later,

the cadet was not in his room, nor did the boys on his floor know where

to find him. It was the Comandante who brought illumination by telling

them, when their inquiries finally led them to his office, that Cadet

Ruffo had been granted leave to visit his family and was not expected

to return to the Academy for at least two weeks.


When asked, the Comandante remained vague as to the precise reason for

Cadet Ruffo's leave, saying something about 'family matters', as if

that should satisfy any curiosity on their part.


Vianello knew that the student list was in Signorina Elettra's

possession, a list that would surely provide the address of Ruffo's

parents, and so it was nothing more than interest in the Comandante's

response that prompted Vianello to ask him to provide it. He refused,

insisting that the addresses of the students constituted privileged

information. Then he announced that he had a meeting to attend and

asked them to leave.


After the two men returned to the Questura and reported this encounter

to Brunetti, he asked Pucetti, "What was your general impression of the

cadets?"


I'd like to say they were frightened, the way Ruffo was when I talked

to him the last time, but they weren't. In fact, they seemed angry

that I'd ask them anything, almost as if I didn't have a right to talk

to them." The young officer shrugged in confusion about how to make

all of this clear. "I mean, they're all seven or eight years younger

than I am, but they acted like they were speaking to a kid or someone

who was supposed to obey them." He looked perplexed.


"An enlisted man, for example?" Brunetti asked.


Not following, Pucetti asked, "Excuse me, sir?"


"As if they were speaking to an enlisted person? Is that how they

spoke to you?"


Pucetti nodded. "Yes, I think so, as if I was supposed to obey them

and not ask questions."


"But that doesn't tell us why they didn't want to talk Vianello

interrupted.


"There's usually only one reason for that Brunetti said.


Before Vianello could ask what he meant, Pucetti blurted out, "Because

they all know whatever Ruffo does, and they don't want us to talk to

him."


Once again, Brunetti graced the young man with an approving smile.


By three that afternoon, they were seated in an unmarked police car

parked a hundred metres from the entrance to the home listed for Cadet

Ruffo, a dairy farm on the outskirts of Dolo, a small town halfway

between Venice and Padova. The stone house, long and low and attached

at one end to a large barn, sat back from a poplar-lined road. A

gravel driveway led up to it from the road, but the recent rains had

reduced it to a narrow band of mud running between patches of dead

grass interspersed with mud-rimmed puddles. There were no trees within

sight, though stumps stood here and there in the fields, indicating

where they had been cut. It was difficult for Brunetti, stiff and cold

in the car, to think of a season different from this one, but he

wondered what the cattle would do without shade from the summer sun.

Then he remembered how seldom cows went to pasture on the farms of the

new Veneto: they generally stood in their stalls, reduced to motionless

cogs in the wheel of milk production.


It was cold; a raw wind was coming from the north. Every so often,

Vianello turned on the motor and put the heat on high, until it grew so

hot in the car that one or another of them was forced to open a

window.


After half an hour, Vianello said, The don't think it makes much sense

to sit here, waiting for him to show up. Why don't we just go and ask

if he's there or not?"


Pucetti, as befitted his inferior position, both in terms of rank and,

because he was in the back seat, geography, said nothing, leaving it to

Brunetti to respond.


Brunetti had been musing on the same question for some time, and

Vianello's outburst was enough to convince him. "You're right," he

said. "Let's go and see if he's there."


Vianello turned on the engine and put the car into gear. Slowly, the

wheels occasionally spinning in search of purchase, they drove through

the mud and gravel and towards the house. As they drew nearer, signs

of rustic life became more and more evident. An abandoned tyre, so

large it could have come only from a tractor, lay against the front of

a barn. To the left of the door of the house a row of rubber boots

stood in odd pairings of black and brown, tall and short. Two large

dogs emerged from around the side of the house and ran towards them,

low and silent and, because of that, frightening. They stopped two

metres short of the car, both on the passenger side, and stared, their

lips pulled back in suspicion, but still silent.


Brunetti could recognize only a few well-known breeds, and he thought

he saw some German Shepherd in these dogs, but there was little else he

could identify. "Well?" he asked Vianello.


Neither of the others said anything, so Brunetti pushed open his door

and put one foot on the ground, careful to choose a patch of dried

grass. The dogs did nothing. He put his other foot on the ground and

pushed himself out of the car. Still the dogs remained motionless. His

nostrils were assailed by the acidic smell of cow urine, and he noticed

that the puddles in front of what he thought to be the doors of the

barn were a dark, foaming brown.


He heard one car door open, then the other, and then Pucetti was

standing beside him. At the sight of two men standing side by side,

the dogs backed away a bit. Vianello came around the front of the car,

and the dogs backed away


even farther, until they stood just at the corner of the building.

Vianello suddenly stamped his right foot and took a long step towards

them, and they disappeared around the corner of the building, still

without having made a sound.


The men walked to the door, where an enormous iron ring served as a

knocker. Brunetti picked it up and let it drop against the metal

plaque nailed into the door, enjoying the weight of it in his hand as

well as the solid clang it created. When there was no response, he did

it again. After a moment, they heard a voice from inside call

something they could not distinguish.


The door was opened by a short, dark-haired woman in a shapeless grey

woollen dress over which she wore a thick green cardigan that had

obviously been knitted by hand, a clumsy hand. Shorter than they, she

stepped back from the door and put her head back to squint at them.

Brunetti noticed that there was a lopsided quality about her face: the

left eye angled up towards her temple, while the same side of her mouth

drooped. Her skin seemed baby soft and was without wrinkles, though

she must have been well into her forties.


"Si?" she finally inquired.


"Is this the home of Giuliano Ruffo?" Brunetti asked.


She might have been a speaker of some other language, so long did it

take her to translate his words into meaning. As Brunetti watched, he

thought he saw her mouth the word, "Giuliano', as if that would help

her answer the question.


"Momenta," the woman said, and the consonants caused her great

difficulty. She turned away, leaving it to them to close the door. Or

just as easily, Brunetti said to himself, walk off with everything in

the house or, if they preferred, kill everyone inside and drive away

undisturbed, even by the dogs.


The three men crowded into the hall and stood there, waiting for the

woman to return or for someone to arrive


better able to answer their questions. After a few minutes they heard

footsteps come towards them from the back of the house. The woman in

the green cardigan returned, and behind her was another woman, younger,

and wearing a sweater made from the same wool but by more skilful

hands. This woman's features and bearing, too, spoke of greater

refinement: dark eyes that instantly sought his, a sculpted mouth

poised to speak, and an air of concentrated attention left Brunetti

with a general impression of brightness and light.


"Si?" she said. Both her tone and her expression made the question

one that required not only an answer, but an explanation.


"I'm Commissario Guido Brunetti, Signora. I'd like to speak to

Giuliano Ruffo. Our records show that this is his home."


"What do you want to talk to him about?" the second woman asked.


"About the death of one of his fellow cadets."


During this exchange, the first woman stood to one side of Brunetti,

open mouthed, her face moving back and forth from one to the other as

he spoke to the younger woman, seeming to register only sound. Brunetti

saw her in profile, and noticed that the undamaged side of her face was

similar to that of the other woman's. Sisters, then, or perhaps

cousins.


"He's not here the younger woman said.


Brunetti had no patience for this. "Then he's in violation of his

leave from the Academy," he said, thinking this might perhaps be

true.


To hell with the Academy," she answered fiercely.


"All the more reason for him to talk to us, then," he countered.


"I told you, he's not here."


Suddenly angry, Brunetti said, "I don't believe you." The idea of what

life in the countryside was like came to him, the


boredom of work relieved only by the hope that some new misery would

befall a neighbour. "If you like, we can leave and then come back

again with three cars, with sirens wailing and red lights flashing, and

fill your courtyard and then go and ask all of your neighbours if they

know where he is."


"You wouldn't do that," she said, far more truthfully than she

realized.


"Then let me talk to him Brunetti said. "Giuliano," said the first

woman, surprising them all.


"It's all right, Luigina," the younger woman said, placing a hand on

her forearm. These men have come to see Giuliano."


"Giuliano," the older woman repeated in the same dull, uninflected

tone.


"That's right, cam. They're friends of his, and they've come to

visit."


"Friends," the woman repeated with a crooked smile. She moved towards

the bulk of Vianello, who was looming behind his colleagues. She

raised her right hand and placed the open palm on the centre of his

chest. She raised her face up to his and said, "Friend."


Vianello placed his hand over hers and said, That's right, Signora.

Friends."


There ensued a moment of intense awkwardness, at least for Brunetti,

Pucetti and the younger woman. Vianello and Luigina remained linked by

her hand on his chest, while Brunetti turned to the other woman and

said, "Signora, I do need to speak to Giuliano. You have my

inspector's word: we're friends."


"Why should I trust you?" she demanded.


Brunetti turned partly towards Vianello, who was now softly patting the

back of the other woman's hand. "Because she does he said.


The younger woman began to protest but let it drop even before she

could pronounce the first word. As Brunetti watched, her face

displayed her recognition of the truth of his remark. Her body relaxed

and she asked, "What do you need to ask him?"

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