14

Brunetti went back downstairs with Vianello, then continued to Signorina Elettra's office, where he found her busy on the phone. She beckoned him into the room, signalled that he was not to leave, and continued what appeared to be a series of monosyllabic responses to a flood of verbosity from the other end of the line. 'Yes. No. Of course. Yes. Yes’ she said, each response interrupted by a long pause, during some of which she busied herself with jotting things down. 'I understand’ she said, 'Signor Brunini is very eager to see the doctor and, yes, he and his companion would come as private patients.' Again, there ensued a silence that seemed even longer now that Brunetti had heard the name and wondered what she was up to.

‘Yes, I realize, of course. Yes, I'll wait’ She held the phone away and rubbed at her ear, then drew the receiver back at the sound of a female voice. 'Oh, really? So soon? Ah, Signora, you're wonderful. Signor Bixmirti will be very pleased. Yes, I have it. Three-thirty on Friday. I’l1 call him right now. And thank you.'

Signorina Elettra put the phone down and glanced at Brunetti, then wrote a few words on fiie paper in front of her.

'Dare I ask?' Brunetti said.

"The Villa Colonna Clinic. In Verona,' she said. 'Where they went’

Though the transmission was somewhat sjemaphoric, Brunetti had no difficulty understanding it.

'And that led you to.. ‘ Brunetti began, then realized that he was lacking an adequate verb. 'To speculate?' he concluded.

'Yes, you could say that,' she answered, obviously pleased by his choice of word. 'About all manner of things. But chiefly about the coincidence that a number of people who were examined at this clinic were put in contact with the person or persons who had a baby to sell' - one could only admire her directness.

'You putting your money on the clinic?'

The arc of her eyebrow rose no more than a millimetre, but the motion spoke of endless possibility.

Brunetti returned to even more uncertain territory. 'Signor Brunini?' he enquired.

'Ah, yes,' she said. 'Signor Brunini.' Brunetti waited until finally she continued. 'I thought it might be interesting to present the clinic with another couple desperate to have a child and rich enough to pay anything to have one’

'Signor Brunini?' he asked, recalling that crime films always advised impostors to select a name close enough to their own to allow them to respond to it automatically.

'Even so’

'And Signora Brunini?' he asked. 'Did you have someone in mind for the role?'

'I thought someone familiar with the investigation should accompany you so that there would be two people able to form an opinion of the place.'

'Go along with me?' Brunetti asked, though the emphasis was hardly necessary.

'Friday at truree-thirty,' she said. 'There's a Eurocity to Munich that leaves at 1:29. That means it will get to Verona at three’

'And would this person who goes along with me be Signora Brunini?'

She hesitated a moment, considering this question, though Brunetti knew her well enough to believe she had already answered it. ‘I thought perhaps the desire for a child would appear more urgent for Signor Brunini if she were his, er, his companion. Younger, and very much in want of a child.'

Brunetti grasped at the first straw that floated past him. 'What about medical records? Wouldn't a doctor at this clinic want to examine them before he saw ... them?'

'Oh, those,' she said, as if already bored with there details. 'Dottor Rizzardi has asked a friend at the Ospedale to prepare them.'

'For Signor Brunini and his, er, his companion?'

'Exactly. They should be ready, and Dottor Rizzardi's friend has only to fax them to Verona.'

Did he have a choice? The question was absurd.

Little happened over the day and a half before Brunetti had to take up the role of Signor Brunini. The couples who had been arrested in Verona and Brescia were sent home, and the police request that they be kept under house arrest was rejected by magistrates in both cities. The children, two articles stated, had been given into the care of the social services. Dottor Pedrolli, too, was told by the Venetian magistrate assigned the case that he could return to his home and to his work, but following the advice of Dottor Damasco, he chose to remain in the hospital. The Carabinieri had decided to bring against him only charges having to do with the false adoption of the baby: mention was no longer made of resisting arrest or injuring a police officer in performance of his duties. Neither he nor his wife made any attempt to contact Brunetti, who was careful to request a written report from the Carabinieri, though there was precious little to report.

Thus, urged by the restless desire to force something, anything, to happen, Brunetti arrived at the station on Friday afternoon on time to catch the 1:29 Eurocity to Munich, scheduled to stop at Verona at 2:54.

'You know, we can stop this if you'd like’ Brunetti said as the train pulled into the Verona station.

Signorina Elettra looked up from her copy of II Manifesto, smiled, and responded, 'But men I'd have to go back to the office, wouldn't I, Commissario?' Her smile was warm, but it did not linger as she shut the paper and got to her feet. She set the newspaper on the seat, took her coat and put it over her arm.

She went into the corridor, and Brunetti picked up the paper, calling after her. 'You've forgotten this.'

‘No, better leave it there. I doubt that patients at this clinic read anything other than Il Giornale. I'd hardly want to trigger alarms by walking in with a Communist newspaper.'

'One does tend to forget that they eat babies’ Brunetti said conversationally as they made their way to the end of the carriage.

'Communists?' she asked, turning to him at the top of the steps.

'So my Aunt Anna believed’ Brunetti said, then added, 'Probably still does.' He followed her down the steps, and together they walked to the stairway that led to the lower level and the station exit.

A few taxis stood in line; Brunetti opened the back door of the first and waited as Signorina Elettra got in. He closed it and walked around to the other side. He gave the driver, who appeared to be either Indian or Pakistani, the name and address of the Villa Colonna, and the man nodded as though they were familiar.

Neither Brunetti nor Signorina Elettra spoke as the taxi pulled into traffic, turning left in front of the station and moving off towards what Brunetti calculated must be the west. He was amazed, as he so often was, at how many cars crowded the roads, at how loud it all was, even through the closed windows of the taxi. Cars appeared to come at them from all directions, some sounding their horns, a noise Brunetti had always found particularly aggressive. The driver muttered under his breath in a language that was not Italian, braking and surging ahead in response to spaces that closed or opened ahead of them. Try as he might, Brunetti never quite managed to understand the cause and effect relationship between what a driver saw and what he did: perhaps there was none.

He sat back and studied the endless rows of new buildings to his left, all low, all ugly, and all apparently selling something.

Voice low, Signorina Elettra said, 'Shall we go ahead with what we planned?'

'I think so,' he replied, though it was she who had planned their roies, not they together, and surely not he. Tt will make me look more than a little desperate, and it suggests that I'm willing to do anything at all to keep you happy.'

'And it gives me an interesting role to play.'

Before he could respond, the taxi came to a sharp halt, pitching them forward, forcing them to brace their hands against the seats in front to avoid crashing into them. The driver swore and banged his fist repeatedly against the dashboard as he continued to mutter to himself. In front of them stood a square-backed truck, its red brake lights glaring. As they sat and watched, black fumes poured from beneath the truck. Within seconds, the taxi was trapped in a black cloud, and the inside began to fill with the acrid smell of burning oil.

‘Is that truck going to explode?' Brunetti asked the driver, not bothering to ask himself how the man would know.

'No, sir.'

Strangely comforted, Brunetti sat back and glanced at Signorina Elettra, who had her hand over her mouth and nose.

Brunetti was pulling out his handkerchief to hand to her when the taxi suddenly jerked forward and slid around the truck. Then they moved off at a speed that pressed them against the backs of their seats. When Brunetti looked, there was no sign of the truck.

'My God,' Signorina Elettra said, 'how can people live like this?'

I've no idea,' Brunetti answered.

They lapsed into silence and before long the taxi slowed and turned into an oval driveway in front of a three-storey building, all gleaming metal and glass.

Twelve Euro, fifty,' the driver said as they drew to a halt.

Brunetti gave him a ten and a five and told him to keep the change. 'Would you like a receipt, sir?' the driver asked. ‘I can make it for any amount you like.'

Brunetti thanked him and said it wasn't necessary, got out and went around to open the door for Signorina Elettra. She swung both feet out and stood, then took his arm and leaned towards him. It's show time, Commissario,' she said and gave him a broad smile that ended in a wink.

The automatic doors opened into a reception area that might have served for an advertising agency, perhaps even a television studio. Money was in evidence. It did not shout and it did not whistle, nor did it try in any vulgar way to call attention to itself. But it was there, evident in the parquet, the Persian rriiniatures on the walls, and in the pale leather chairs and sofa that sat around three sides of a square marble table on which rested a bouquet of flowers more splendid than anything Signorina Elettfa had to date thought of ordering for the Questura.

A young woman quite as beautiful as the flowers, if somewhat more restrained in colour choice, sat at a glass-topped table. No papers and nothing to write with could be seen, only a flat-screen computer and a keyboard. Through the surface of the desk, Brunetti saw that she sat with her feet neatly together, a pair of brown shoes peeping out from the bottom of what looked like black silk slacks.

She smiled as they approached, revealing dimples on either side of a perfect mouth. Her hair appeared to be naturally blonde, though Brunetti had abandoned the idea that he could any longer tell, and her eyes were green, though one seemed to be just minimally larger than the other. 'May I help you?' she asked, making it sound as if this were her single goal in life.

'My name is Brunini’ he said. I have a three-thirty appointment with Dottor Calamandri.'

Again that smile. 'One moment and I'll check.' She turned aside and typed a few letters into the computer, tapping mem out carefully with the tips of her blunt-cut fingernails. She waited a second, glanced back at them and said, 'If you'll take seats over there, the dottore will see you in five minutes.'

Brunetti nodded and started to turn away. The young woman came around her desk to lead them to the seats, almost as if she doubted they could make the two-metre trip unaided.

'Would either of you like something to drink?' she asked, her smile refusing to fade.

Signorina Elettra shook her head, not bothering to say thank you. She was, after all, the spoiled companion of a wealthy man, and such women did not smile at their inferiors. Nor did they smile at women who were younger than they, especially when they were in the company of a man.

They sat down and the young woman returned to her desk, where she busied herself at her computer, the screen of which Brunetti could not see. He looked at the magazines lying beneath the flowers: AD, Vogue, Focus. –Nothing so vulgar as Gente or Oggi, or CM, the sort of magazine one looked forward to being able to read in the doctor's waiting room.

He picked up Architectural Digest but tossed it down before opening it, remembering that the reason he was there was to be attentive to the wishes of his companion. He leaned towards her and asked, 'Are you all right?'

'As soon as this is over, I will be,' she said, looking up at him and trying to smile.

Neither spoke for some time, and. Brunetti's attention wandered back to the covers of the magazines. He heard a door open and looked up to see another woman, older than the one at the desk and less attractive, approaching them. Her brown hair was parted in the middle and cut to just below her ears, falling forward on both sides of her face. She wore a white lab jacket over a grey wool skirt. Her legs were fine and well-muscled, the legs of a woman who played tennis or ran, but no less beautiful for that.

Brunetti stood. The woman extended her hand, saying, 'Good afternoon, Signor Brunini.' Brunetti expressed his pleasure in meeting her. He noticed the reason for the hair style: a thick layer of makeup attempted - and failed - to cover the rough pitting left by acne or some other skin disease. The scars, confined to the sides of her cheeks, were almost completely hidden by her hair. 'I'm Dottoressa Fontana, Dottor Calamandri's assistant. I'll take you to him.'

Signorina Elettra, secure in the presence of far less competition than that offered by the woman at the desk, could afford a gracious smile. She. took Brunetti's arm, suggesting that she might need his help to make whatever distance it was to Dottor Calamandri's office.

Dottor Fontana led them down a corridor where the elegance of the waiting room gave way to the practical sense of a medical institution: the floor was made of square grey tiles, and the prints on the walls were black and white city prospects. The doctor's legs looked as good from the back as from the front.

Dottor Fontana stopped at a door on the right, knocked, and opened it. Allowing Brunetti and Signorina Elettra to precede her into the room, she followed them in and closed the door.

A man somewhat older than Brunetti sat behind a. desk the surface of which made no pretence to anything other than chaos. Stacks of files and loose papers lay everywhere, brochures, magazines, boxes of prescription drugs, pencils, pens, a Swiss Army knife, medical reviews abandoned as though the reader had been called away.

The same disorder was evident in the doctor himself, whose loosened tie showed at the top of his lab coat. Pencils and what might be a thermometer stuck up from the breast pocket of the jacket; his name was stitched into the top of the pocket. He had a faintly distracted air, as if he were not quite sure how this mess had accumulated before him. Clean-shaven and round-faced, he glanced up and smiled, reminding Brunetti of the doctors of his youth, men willing to be called out at night to visit people in their homes, men to whom the health of their patients was worth any time or effort.

Brunetti gave the room a quick glance and saw the usual: framed medical degrees on the walls, glass-fronted cabinets filled with boxes of pharmaceuticals, and the end of a paper-sheeted exarnining table emerging from behind a portable screen.

Calamandri got to his feet and leaned across his desk to offer his hand, first to Signorina Elettra and then to Brunetti. He said good afternoon and indicated two of the chairs in front of his desk. Dottor Fontana took the remaining seat to their right.

'I have your file here,' Calamandri said in a businesslike voice. From a pile of folders, with unerring aim, he pulled out a brown manila one. He pushed papers to one side to clear a space and opened the file. He placed his right palm, fingers spread, on the contents and looked at them. Tve seen the results of all of your tests and exams, and I think the best thing I can do is tell you the truth.' Signorina Elettra raised a hand halfway to her mouth. Calamandri went on, ‘I realize this will not be the news you came here hoping for, but it's the most honest information I can give you.'

Signorina Elettra let out a small sigh as her hand fell to her lap, where it joined the other in grasping at her handbag. Brunetti glanced at her and put a comforting hand on her arm.

Calamandri waited for her to speak, or Brunetti, but when neither did, he went on, ‘I could suggest that you have the tests done again’

Signorina Elettra cut him off with a violent shake of her head. 'No. No more tests’ she said in a harsh voice. Turning to Brunetti, she said, voice grown softer, ‘I can't do that again, Guido’

Calamandri raised a comforting hand and said, addressing Brunetti, 'I'm afraid I agree with your, er...' Failing to find the word to describe her connection with Brunini, Calamandri turned his attention to Signorina Elettra directly and repeated, ‘I'm afraid I agree with you, Signora.' She responded with a small, pained smile.

Glancing back and forth between Brunetti and Signorina Elettra to show that what he had to say now was intended for both of them, Calamandri added, 'The tests you've had, both of you, are definitive. You've had them twice, so there is really no purpose in your bothering with them again.' He looked at the papers in front of him, then towards Brunetti. 'In the second test, the count is even lower’

Brunetti thought of lowering his head in shame at this blow to his masculinity but refused the temptation and continued to meet the doctor's eye, but he did so nervously.

To Signorina Elettra, Calamandri said, ‘I don't know what the other doctors have told you, Signora, but from what I read here, I'd say that there is almost no likelihood of conception.' He turned a page, glanced at whatever had been concocted there by Rizzardi and his friend at the lab, then back at her. 'How old were you when this happened?' he asked.

'Eighteen’ she answered, meeting his glance.

'If I might ask, why did you wait so long to have the infection treated?' he asked, managing to keep any sign of reproach out of his voice.

'I was younger then’ she answered and gave a small shrug, as if to distance herself from that younger person.

Calamandri said nothing, and his silence eventually prodded her into self-justification. 'I thought it was something else. You know, a bladder infection or something like that; one of those fungus things you get.' She turned to Brunetti and took his hand. 'But by the time I went to a doctor, the infection had spread.'

Brunetti was careful to keep his eyes on her face, gazing at her as though she were rearing a sonnet or singing a lullaby to the child they could not have, instead of referring to a bout of venereal disease. He hoped Calamandri had enough experience to recognize a man gone stupid through love. Or lust. Brunetti had seen enough of bom to believe the signs were identical.

'Did they tell you then what the consequences of the infection were likely to be, Signora?' Calamandri asked: 'that you probably would not be able to have children?'

'I told you’ she said, making no attempt to disguise the anger that underlay her embarrassment, 'I was younger then.' She shook her head a few times and pulled her hand back from

Brunetti's to wipe at her eyes. Then she looked at Brunetti and said, with an intensity that suggested no one was in the room with them, 'That was before I met you, caro, before I wanted to have a baby. Our baby’

‘I see,' the doctor said, and closed the file. He folded his hands and placed them very sombrely on top of it. He glanced at his colleague and said, 'Do you have anything to add, Dottoressa?'

She leaned forward and spoke to Brunetti, who sat on the other side of Signorina Elettra. 'Before. I looked at the file, I thought assisted conception might be possible, but after seeing the X-rays and reading the report from the doctors at the Ospedale Civile, I no longer think that’s feasible.'

Signorina Elettra burst out, 'Don't blame me.'

As if she had not spoken, Dottoressa Fontana continued, turning her attention to her colleague, 'As you say, Dottore, the sperm count is too low, so I don't think it's likely that conception could take place in the normal fashion in any case, regardless of the Signora's condition’ She turned to Signorina Elettra and said coolly, 'We're doctors, Signora. We don't blame people; we simply try to treat them’

'So what does that mean?' Brunetti asked before Signorina Elettra had a chance to speak.

'I'm afraid it means,' said Calamandri with a small tightening of his lips, 'that we can't help you’

'But that's not what I was told,' Brunetti blustered.

'By whom, Signore?^’ Calamandri inquired. 'By my doctor in Venice. He said you worked miracles.'

Calamandri smiled and shook his head. 'I'm afraid only il Signore can work miracles, Signor Brunini. And even He had to have something to work with: the bread and fishes or the water at the wedding.' He glanced at their faces and saw that the reference, which Brunetti acknowledged with a nod, was lost on his companion.

'But I have the money,' Brunetti said. 'There's got to be something you can do.'

'I'm afraid the only thing I can do, Signore,' Calamandri said with a very conspicuous glance at his watch, 'is to suggest that you and your wife consider the possibility of adoption. The process is a long one and perhaps not the easiest, but in your circumstances, it's the only route I can see that might be open to you.'

How did she manage to blush, Brunetti wondered? How on earth did Signorina Elettra manage to have her entire face, even her ears, flush a bright red and remain that way for long seconds as she looked down into her lap and began to snap open and closed the hinge on her bag?

'We're not married,' Brunetti said in order to end the silence, something no one else in the room seemed willing or able to do. 'I'm separated from my wife. Well, not legally, that is. And Elettra and I have been together now for more than a year’ His wife, the joy of his life, was in Venice and he was in Verona, so he was indeed separated from her. There existed no legal separation between them and, please heaven, let that possibility remain always as absurd as it was at this moment. And Signorina Elettra had been working at the Questura for a decade now, so he and she had been together, surely, for more than a year. Whatever their profound deceit, then, all of his statements were quite literally true.

He glanced aside at Signorina Elettra and saw that she was still staring at her lap, though her hands were quiet now, and her face had grown a deathly white. 'So, you see,' he said, looking back at Calamandri, 'we can't adopt. That's why we hoped to be able to have a baby. Together.'

After quite a long time, Calamandri said, ‘I see.' He closed Brunetti's file and slid it to his right. He glanced at Dottoressa Fontana, but she had nothing to say. Calamandri got to his feet. Dottoressa Fontana followed suit, as did Brunetti. When Signorina Elettra remained in her seat, Brunetti bent down and placed a hand on her shoulder. 'Come on, cara. There's nothing more we can do here.'

She turned a tear-streaked face to him and said, voice pleading, 'But you said we'd have a baby. You said you'd do anything.'

Kneeling at her side and pulling her weeping face into his shoulder, Brunetti said softly, but not so softly that the other two would not hear, ‘I did promise. I promise on my mother's head. I'll do anything.' He looked at Calamandri and Fontana, but they were already leaving.

When they had closed the door behind them, Brunetti helped Signorina Elettra to her feet and placed his arm around her shoulders. ‘Come on, Elettra, we'll go home now. There's nothing else here for us.'

'But you promise, you promise you'll do something?' she pleaded.

'Anything’ Brunetti repeated, and led the weeping woman towards the door.

15

They remained in role until they were on the train back to Venice, sitting across from one another in the all but empty first-class carriage of the Eurocity from Milano. They had not spoken while they waited in the clinic for the taxi the receptionist called, nor in the taxi itself. But in the train, with no remaining chance that they would be seen or overheard, Signorina Elettra sat back in her seat and took a deep breath. Brunetti thought he saw her real persona return to take possession of her, but since he was never quite sure just what that persona was, he was not certain that this had actually taken place.

^‘Well?^’ Brunetti asked her.

'No, not yet’ she said. ‘I'm still exhausted from all those tears’