‘Now did you do it?' Brunetti asked. 'What? Cry?'

'Yes.' In over a decade, he had seen her cry only once, and then it had been for real. Many of the tales of human misery and malice that unfolded at the Questura were such as to cause a stone to weep, but she had always maintained a professional distance from them, even when many others, including the impenetrably unimaginative Alvise, were moved.

'I thought about the masegni,' she said with a small smile.

She had made odd remarks in the past, but to suggest that she could cry at the thought of paving stones was not something he was prepared for. 'I beg your pardon,' he said, all thought of Dottor Calamandri momentarily forgotten, 'why do you cry at the thought of the masegni?'

'Because I'm Venetian,' she answered, aiding understanding no further.

The conductor passed by at that moment, and when he was finished checking their tickets and had moved down the compartment, Brunetti said, 'Could you explain?'

'They're gone, you know? Or hadn't you noticed?' she asked.

Where would paving stones go? Brunetti wondered. And how? Perhaps the stress of the last hour had ...

'During the repaving of the streets,' she continued, preventing him from completing the thought. 'When they raised the sidewalks against acqua alta,' she added, raising her eyebrows in silent comment on the folly of that attempt. 'They dug up all the masegni, the ones that had been there for centuries’ Hearing her, he remembered the months he had spent watching the workmen, as campi and colli were torn up, pipes and phone wires installed or renewed, then everything put back again.

'And what did they replace them with?' she asked. Brunetti tried never to encourage the asking of rhetorical questions by dignifying them with an answer, and so he remained silent.

'They replaced them with machine-cut, perfectly rectangular stones, every one a living example of just how perfect four right angles can be’

Brunetti remembered now being struck by how well the new stones did fit together, unlike the old ones with their rough edges and irregular surfaces.

'And where did the old ones go, I wonder?' she asked, raising her right index finger in the air in a ritual gesture of interrogation’When Brunetti still made no answer, she said, 'Friends of mine saw them, stacked up neatly in a field in Marghera.' She smiled, and went on: 'carefully bound in wire, as if ready for shipment to somewhere else. They even photographed them. And there has been talk of a piazza somewhere in Japan where they were used.'

Brunetti made no attempt to disguise his confusion. Japan?' he asked.

That's just talk, sir’ she said. 'Since I haven't seen them myself, only the photographs, I suppose all of this could be nothing more than urban myth. And there's no proof, well, no proof aside from the fact that they were there, thousands of them, centuries-old stones, when the work started, and now most of them aren't there. So unless they decided to turn themselves into lemmings and jump into the laguna one night when no one was watching, someone took them and didn't bring them back’

Brunetti was busy calculating the sheer volume of stone. There would have been boatloads, truckfuls, whole acres of the things. Too many of them to hide, enormously expensive to transport, how could anyone organize such a thing? And for what purpose?

Almost as if he had posed the questions out loud, she said. To sell them, Commissario. To dig them up and take them away at the city's expense - hand-cut, centuries-old volcanic rock paving stones - and sell them. That's why’ He thought she had finished but she added, 'Even the French and the Austrians, when they invaded - and God knows they stripped us clean - at least they left us the paving stones. Just thinking about it is enough to make me weep.'

As it would, Brunetti realized, any Venetian. He found his imagination working, wondering who might have organized this, who would have had to be complicit in order for it to have been done, and he liked none of the possibilities that occurred to him. From nowhere, the memory arose of an expression his mother had often used, that Neapolitans 'would steal the shoes from your feet while you were walking⁷. Well, how much more clever we Venetians, for some of us manage to steal the paving stones from under our own feet.

'As to Dottor Calamandri,' she said, reeling in Brunetti's wandering attention, lie seemed like a very busy doctor who wanted to be honest with his patients. He at least wanted them not to have any illusions about the possibilities that were open to them. And to discourage false illusions.' She gave that time to register and then asked, 'And you?'

'Pretty much the same. He could very easily have recommended that we have the whole series of tests done again. At his clinic. In his lab.'

'But he didn't,' she agreed. 'Which is a sign of an honest man.'

'Or one who wants to appear to be honest,' Brunetti suggested.

Those would have been my next words,' she said with a smile; The train began to slow as it approached the Mestre station. On their left, people hurried into and out of the station, into and out of McDonald's. They watched the people on the platform and in the other train to their right, and then the doors slammed shut and they were moving again.

They talked idly, discussing Dottoressa Fontana's chilly manner and agreeing that the only thing now was to wait to see if Brunini would receive a phone call from someone saying they worked with the clinic. Failing that, perhaps either Pedrolli or his wife would be more form-coming, or Signorina Elettra would find a way to worm her way into the records of the ongoing Carabinieri investigation.

A few minutes later, the smokestacks of Marghera came into view on their right, and Brunetti wondered what sort of comment Signorina Elettra would have to make about them today. But it seemed that her ration of indignation had been used up by the masegni, for she remained silent, and soon the train drew into Santa Lucia.

As they walked towards the exit, Brunetti looked up at the clock and saw that it was thirteen minutes after six. He could easily catch the Number One that left at six-sixteen: like a baby penguin that has imprinted the image of his mother in his memory, Brunetti had known for more than a generation that the Number One left from in front of the station at ten-minute intervals, starting at six minutes after the hour.

'I think ‘I’ll walk’ she said as they started down the steps, threading their way through the mass of people rushing for their trains. Neither of them discussed the possibility, or the duty, of going back to the Questura.

At the bottom, they paused, she poised to move off to the left and he towards the imbarcadero on the right. 'Thank you,' Brunetti said, smiling.

'You're more than welcome, Commissario. It's far better than spending the afternoon working on staff projections for next month.' She raised a hand in farewell, and disappeared into the streams of people walking from the station. He watched her for a moment, but then he heard the vaporetto reversing its engines as it pulled up to the imbarcadero, and he hurried to his boat and home.

 

'You're early tonight,' Paola called from the living room as he let himself into the apartment. She made it sound as if his unexpected arrival was the most pleasant thing that had happened to her in some time.

'I had to leave the city to go and talk to someone, and when I got back it was too late to bother going back to work,' he called while he hung up his jacket. He chose to leave it all very vague, this trip out of the city; if she asked he would tell her, but there was no reason to burden her with the details of his work. He loosened his tie: why in God's name do we still wear them? Worse, why did he still feel undressed without one?

He went into the living room and found her, as he expected to, supine on the sofa, a book dropped open on her chest. He walked over to her and bent to squeeze one of her feet.

'Twenty years ago, you would have bent down and kissed me,' she said.

'Twenty years ago, my back would not have hurt when I did,' he answered, then bent down and kissed her. When he stood, he pressed a melodramatic hand to his lower back and staggered, a broken man, towards the kitchen. 'Only wine can save me’ he gasped.

In the kitchen, the mingled aromas of baking pastry and something both sweet and sharp greeted him. With no effort and no protest, he bent to look through the glass door of the oven and saw the deep glass baking tray Paola always used for crespelle: this time with zucchini and what looked like peperoni gialli: that explained both aromas.

He opened the refrigerator and had a look. No, with the cooler weather Brunetti suddenly wanted a red. From the cabinet he took a bottle of something called Masetto Nero and studied the label, uncertain where it had come from.

He walked back to the door of the living room. 'What's Masetto Nero and where did it come from?'

'If it's from a vineyard called Endrizzi, it's something my father sent over’ she said, her eyes not leaving the page.

This explanation left Brunetti more than a little confused, for he could not determine the dimensions of 'sent over' when Count Orazio Falier was the person doing the sending. Sent his boat over with a dozen cases? Sent one of his employees over with a single bottle for them to taste? Had bought the vineyard and sent over a few bottles to ask what they thought of it?

He went back to the kitchen counter and opened the wine. He sniffed at the cork after he pulled it out, though he never quite knew what he was meant to smell there. It smelled like a cork from a wine bottle: most of them did. He poured two glasses and carried them back to the living room.

He set her glass down beside her, then sat in the space she created by pulling her feet back. He sipped. And hoped the Count had bought the vineyard. 'What are you reading?' he asked, seeing that she had returned to the book, though the glass was in her other hand and she seemed pleased with what she tasted.

‘Luke.'

In all these years, she had never dared to refer even to her beloved Henry James with anything but his full name, nor had Jane Austen been exposed to the affront of unsolicited familiarity. 'Luke who?'

‘Luke the Evangelist.'

'As in the New Testament?' he asked, though he could think of nothing else that Luke might have written.

'Even so.'

'What about?'

'All that stuff about doing to others what you would have them do unto you.'

'Does that mean you'll get up to get the next bottle?' he asked.

She allowed the book to fall to her chest, he thought a little bit melodramatically. She sipped at her wine and raised her eyebrows in appreciation. ‘It’s fabulous, but I think one bottle might tide us through until dinner, Guido’ She sipped again.

‘Yes, it's very good, isn't it?' he asked.

She nodded and took another sip.

After some time, he asked, curious to learn why someone like Paola was reading Luke. 'And what particular reflections did that text encourage in you?'

'I love it when you try to sweet-talk me with sarcasm,' she said and replaced her glass on the table. She closed the book and placed it beside her glass. 'I was talking to Marina Canziani today. I ran into her at the Marciana.'

'And?'

'And she started talking about her aunt, the one who raised her.' 'And?'

'And the woman's suddenly - I think she's about ninety - got old, old and feeble. It happened to her the way it happens to very old people: one day they're fine, and then two weeks later they've collapsed into the ruin of old age.'

Marina's aunt - he thought her name was Italia: at any rate, something mastodontic like that - had been at the back of Marina's life for as long as Brunetti and Paola had known her, and that had been for decades. The aunt had taken her in when her parents were killed in a road accident, had raised her with rigorous, inflexible rectitude, seen that she went to university and did well, but had never given her even the most minimal demonstration of affection or approval in all the years Marina was in her charge. She had been an astute administrator of Marina's inheritance and had turned her into a very wealthy woman, and she had been a stern opponent of the marriage that had turned Marina into a very happy woman.

No further information was formcoming. Brunetti thought about Marina's aunt, sipped at his wine, and finally said, I'm not sure I see the connection to Saint Luke.'

. Paola smiled, showing, he thought, an excess of teeth. 'She begged Marina to take her into her home and let her live there, with them. She offered to pay rent and said she'd pay for someone to come in to be with her every day and to stay there at night to take care of her.'

'And Marina?' Brunetti asked.

Told her she was willing either to arrange for una badante to come and live with her in her own home and take care of her or for her to go to a private nursing home on the Lido.'

Brunetti still failed to grasp the connection to scripture. 'And?' he repeated.

'And it occurred to me that perhaps what Christ was doing was actually giving some very sensible investment advice. That is, maybe we shouldn't read it as some sort of moral imperative always to do good to people, but more as an observation about what happens when we don't. If people are going to pay us back, as it were, in kind, then charity is a wise investment.'

'And Marina's aunt made a bad investment?'

'Exactly’

He finished his wine and leaned forward to set the glass on the table. 'Interesting interpretation’ he said. 'This the sort of thing you scholarly people talk about when you're at work?'

She took her glass, finished the wine, and said, 'When we're not demonstrating our superiority to our students.'

'One would assume that hardly needs demonstration,' Brunetti said, then, 'What's after the crespelle?’

Coniglio in umido,' she said, then posed her own question. 'Why is it that you always assume I have nothing better to do with my time but to cook dinner? I'm a university professor, you know. I have a job. I have a professional life.'

He picked up her sentence at the bounce and continued it'... and I ought not to be relegated to the position of kitchen slave by a husband who, in typical male fashion, assumes that it's my job to cook, while it's his to carry the slaughtered beast home on his back,' he said, then went into the kitchen and came back with the bottle.

He poured some into her glass then filled his own and sat down again beside her feet. He saluted her with his glass and took another sip. 'Really wonderful. How much did he "send over"?'

"Three cases, and you're ignoring my question.'

'No, I'm not ignoring it: I'm trying to figure out how seriously I'm meant to take it. Given the fact that you. teach about four hours a week and spend far less time than that talking to students, my conscience is clear on the imbalance of time we spend in the kitchen’ She started to speak, but he ignored her and kept talking. 'And if you're going to say you have to spend so much time reading, I'd say that you'd probably go mad if you couldn't spend all your free time reading’ After a long swallow of wine, he took one of her feet and shook it gently.

She smiled and said, 'So much for my attempt at legitimate protest’

He closed his eyes and rested his head against the back of the sofa.

'Well, protest,' she admitted, after some time had passed.

After even more had passed, he said, eyes still closed, 'I went out to that clinic in Verona today.'

'The fertility clinic?'

'Yes’

After she had said nothing for a long time, he opened his eyes and glanced in her direction. 'What is it?' he asked, sensing that she had something she wanted to say.

'It seems I can't read a magazine or a newspaper without coming on an article about overpopulation,' Paola said. 'Six billion, seven, eight, dire warnings about the population bomb and the lack of sufficient natural resources to support us all. And at the same time, people are going to fertility clinics ...'

'In order to add to the population?' he asked.

'No’ she answered instantly. 'Hardly. In order to satisfy a real human urge.'

'Not a human need?' he asked.

'Guido’ she began in a voice she forced to sound .tired, 'we've been here before, trying to define "need". You know what I think it means: if you don't get it - like food or water - you die.'

'And I keep thinking it's more: that it's those things that make us different from the other animals.'

He saw her nod, but then she said, 'I think I don't want to pursue this now. Besides, I know that, even if you badger me with logic and good sense, and even if you argue from the personal about our own children, you still won't get me to agree that it's a need, having children. So let me save us both time and energy by not talking about it, all right?'

He leaned forward to pick up the bottle, then decided against it and set it back on the table. ‘I went to Verona with Signorina Elettra,' he said, surprising himself with the revelation. 'We were a couple desperate to have a child. I wanted to see if the clinic is involved with these adoptions.'

'Did they believe you? At the clinic?' she asked, though to Brunetti the more important matter was whether the clinic was in fact involved in the false adoptions.

'I think so,' he said, considering it better not to attempt to explain why this might be so.

Paola shifted her feet on to the floor and sat up. She placed her glass on the table, then turned to Brunetti and picked a long dark hair from the front of his shirt. She let it drop to the carpet and got to her feet. Saying nothing, she went into the kitchen to prepare the rest of dinner.

 

16

 

 

 

As the days passed, the Pedrolli case, and to a lesser degree the cases of illegal adoption in other cities, disappeared from the news. Brunetti continued to interest himself in a semi-official way. Vianello managed to find the transcript of the conversation Brunetti had had with the woman who lived near Rialto. When the Inspector went to speak to her, she could remember nothing further, save that the woman who made the phone call had worn glasses. The apartment opposite, where the pregnant woman had spent those days, turned out to be owned by a man in Torino and was rented out by the week or month. When questioned, the managing agent found only an indication that a Signor Giulio D'Alessio, who had not given an address and had preferred to pay with cash, had rented the apartment during the period when the young woman had been there. No, the agent had no clear memory of Signor Rossi. The trail, if indeed it had been a trail, ended there.

Marvilli did not return either of the calls Brunetti made to his office, and the other contacts he had at the Carabinieri failed to divulge any information other than what had been given to the press: the children were in the care of social services and the investigation was proceeding. He did learn, however, that a fax had been sent by the Carabinieri to the Questura the day before the raid, informing the Venice police of the planned raid and giving Pedrolli's name and address. The absence of reply from the police had been taken by the Carabinieri to signify assent. In response to Brunetti's request, the Carabinieri sent a copy of the fax, along with the receipt for its successful transmission to the appropriate number at the Questura.

Brunetti's reports to the Vice-Questore had included this information, as well as a note of the failure of all attempts to locate the missing fax. In response, Patta suggested that Brunetti return to his other cases and let the Carabinieri get on with Dottor Pedrolli.

Brunetti could not understand the media's apparentlack of interest in the story: he assumed that the veil of official or bureaucratic privacy would have descended to cover the children, their names and their whereabouts, but the parents and the lengths to which they had gone in order to obtain children would surely still be of interest to readers and viewers alike. In a country where the presence of a child in a criminal case, whether as the victim of murder or the survivor of an attempt - or, even better, as the perpetrator - was sure to keep media coverage of a case percolating for days, perhaps weeks, it was strange that these people had so swiftly disappeared from public view.

Years after her arrest for the murder of her child, an interview with 'la madre di Cogne' - even simply an article about her - was a surefire way to raise viewer or reader numbers. Even a Ukrainian who tossed her newborn into a skip was bound to get headlines for three days. But the local press dropped Pedrolli after two days, though La Repubblica kept the story going for another three before it was superseded by the death of a young Carabiniere, shot by a convicted murderer out of prison on a weekend pass. It was the speed with which the Pedrolli story vanished from II Gazzettino and La Nuova, however, that aroused Brunetti's curiosity, so on the second morning when there was no mention of the case in the papers, he called his friend Pelusso at his office. The journalist explained that the word at II Gazzettino was that the story had not appealed to someone, and so it had been dropped.

Brunetti, a dedicated reader of that newspaper, knew who the chief advertisers were, and Signorina Elettra had discovered that Signora Marcolini belonged to the plumbing supply branch of the family. Thus Brunetti observed To say toilet is to say Marcolini’

'Indeed’ agreed Pelusso, but then quickly added, as though driven to it by whatever remnant of respect for accuracy had managed to survive his decades of journalistic employment, 'He's the likely suspect, because of his daughter, but no one here mentioned his name directly’

'You think it's necessary to mention it?' Brunetti asked. 'After all, as you said, she's his daughter, and this sort of publicity can't work to anyone's good.'

'Don't be so certain about that, Guido’ the journalist answered. 'The Carabinieri broke in: the husband might still be in the hospital for all anyone knows. And they took the baby. That's got to be enough to earn the two of them a great deal of sympathy, regardless of how they got the baby in the first place’

This presented an interesting possibility to Brunetti, and he said, "The Carabinieri, then.'

'Why would they squelch a story like this?'

'Well, first, to dispose of something that presents them in a bad light, but also maybe to lead the people they think are behind all of this to believe it's safe to begin coming out of the woodwork’ Brunetti suggested. When Pelusso said nothing, Brunetti continued, forming his ideas as he continued to speak. 'If this is some sort of ring, it means whoever's organizing it knows a number of people who want babies and are willing to pay for them, and that means there have got to be other women who have agreed to give them up after they're born.' 'Obviously.'

'But you can't postpone that, can you?' Brunetti asked. 'If a woman's going to have .a baby, then she's going to have it when the baby is ready to come, not when some middle man tells her it's time.'

'And if there's as much money in this as I've heard there is,' Pelusso continued slowly, adding his own reasoning to Brunetti's, 'then they'll get back in touch with their buyers.'

Immediately alert, Brunetti asked, ‘I)o you hear much about this sort of thing?'

'I think a lot of it's urban myth,' Pelusso answered. 'You know, like the Chinese who never die because there's never a funeral. But a lot of people do talk about this business of buying and selling babies.'

'You ever hear anyone mention a price?' Brunetti asked, hoping that Pelusso would not ask him why the police didn't already have this information.

There followed a longish pause, as though Pelusso were entertaining that same thought, but when he spoke, it was merely to answer Brunetti's question. 'No, not with any certainty. I've heard rumours, but as I told you, Guido, people talk about it the way they talk about everything: "I heard this from someone who knows." "My friend knows all about this." "My neighbour has a cousin who has a friend who ..." There's no way to know whether we're being told the truth or not'

Brunetti stopped himself from observing that this uncertainty was a common phenomenon and hardly limited to Pelusso's experience as a member of the press. Brunetti had no way of knowing if Italians were more gullible than other people, or whether they were simply less informed. He had heard rumours of countries where there existed an independent press that provided accurate information and where the television was not all controlled by one man; indeed, his own wife had expressed belief in the existence of these marvels.

Pelusso's voice summoned him back from these meanderings. 'Is there anything else?' the journalist asked.

'Yes. If you do hear anything definite about who wanted the stories dropped, I'd appreciate it if you'd give me a call,' Brunetti said.

'I'll let you know,' Pelusso said and was gone.

Brunetti replaced the phone, his imagination drawn, by some route he could not identify, to poems Paola had read to him, years ago. They had been written by an Elizabethan poet about the deaths of his two children, a boy and a girl. Brunetti remembered her indignation that the poet was far more disturbed by the death of his son than that of his daughter, but Brunetti recalled only the shattered man's wish that he 'could lose all father now'. How profound would suffering have to be for a man to wish he had never been a father? Two of their friends had seen their children die, and neither had ever come back from that pain. By force of will, he pressed his attention towards the people who might be able to provide him with information about this business in babies, and he recalled his unsuccessful visit to the Ufficio Anagrafe.

Brunetti decided to phone them and within minutes had the information. If a man and the woman of a newborn child came into their office and signed a declaration that the man was the father of the child, that, in essence, was the end of it. Of course, they were required to present their identity cards and proof of the birth; if they chose, they could even do it at the hospital, where there was a branch of the office.

Brunetti had just whispered the words, 'A licence to steal', when Vianello came into his office without bothering to knock.

'They just got a call downstairs,' Vianello said without preamble. 'Someone broke into the pharmacy in Campo Sant'Angelo.'

'One of your pharmacists?' Brunetti asked with undisguised interest.

Vianello nodded but before Brunetti could ask another question, said, 'We're still looking into bank records.'

'Broke in and did what?' Brunetti asked, wondering if this could be an attempt to destroy evidence or throw dust in the eyes of anyone taking an interest in the pharmacy.

'Whoever called said she opened the door and didn't even bother to go in when she saw what had happened. She called us immediately.'

'But she didn't say what happened?' asked Brunetti with ill-disguised exasperation.

'No. I asked Foa to take us over. He's got the launch waiting.' When Brunetti remained at his desk, Vianello said, ‘I think we should go. Before anyone else gets there.'

'Interesting coincidence, isn't it?' Brunetti asked.

'I'm not sure what it is, but I doubt either one of us thinks this is a coincidence,' Vianello answered.

Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that it was almost ten. 'Why was she just getting there now? Shouldn't they have opened an hour ago?'

'She didn't say, or if she did, Riverre didn't tell me. All he said was that she called and said someone had broken into the place.' In response to the growing impatience in Vianello's voice, Brunetti got to his feet and joined him at the door. 'All right. Let's go and have a look.'

 

The quickest way was for Foa to turn into Rio San Maurizio and then take them to Campo Sant'Angelo. They crossed the campo and approached the pharmacy. Light filtering in from outside muminated the posters on display in the two shop windows, though no lights appeared to be on inside. Brunetti's eye was drawn to a pair of sleek, tanned female thighs which presented themselves to the beholder, proof of the ease with which cellulite could be banished in a single week. Next to them a white-haired couple stood side by side on a spun-sugar beach, each gazing longingly into the eyes of the other, their hands joined; behind them glistened a tropical sea, on the sand below them a box of arthritis medicine.

‘Is this the only entrance?' Brunetti asked, pointing to the intact glass door between the two windows.

'No, the staff uses a door down the calle around that side,' Viariello answered, displaying a dubious familiarity with the workings of the pharmacy. Following his own directions, the Inspector led Brunetti to the left and then into a calle that led back towards La Fenice.

As they approached the first door on the right, a woman of about Brunetti's age stepped from the doorway, asking, 'Are you the police?'

'Si, Signora,' Brunetti answered, introducing himself and then Vianello. She could have been any of hundreds of Venetian women her age. Her hair was cut short and dyed dark red; her weight was concentrated in her torso, but she had the sense to disguise this with a box-cut jacket over a matching tari ‘I-shirt. Good calves showed under a knee-length brown skirt, and she wore brown pumps with low heels. She carried the remnants of a summer tan and wore little makeup beyond pale lipstick and blue eye shadow.

'I'm Eleonora Invernizzi. I work for Dottor Franchi.' Then, as if to prevent them from taking her for one of the pharmacists, she added, 'I'm the saleswoman.' She did not extend her hand and gazed back and forth at the two men.

'Could you tell us what happened, Signora?'

Brunetti asked. She was standing in front of the closed wooden door that presumably led into the pharmacy, but Brunetti made no move towards it.

She shifted the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder and pointed to the lock. Both of them could see the damage: someone had jimmied open the door, with such force that the wood was splintered and stuck out jaggedly above and below the keyhole, suggesting that a crowbar had slipped a few times before it found sufficient purchase to spring the lock and allow the door to be pushed open.

Signora Invernizzi said, 'If I've told him once, I've told the dottore a hundred times that this lock is an invitation to thieves. Every time I tell him, he says, yes, he'll change it, get a porta blindata, but then he doesn't, and then I tell him again, and still he doesn't do it.' She pointed to the metal grate that covered a small window in the door. ‘I touched it there when I pushed the door open,' she said. 'Otherwise, I haven't touched anything. I didn't even go inside. I just looked and then called you.'

"That was very wise, Signora,' Vianello said.

Brunetti stepped up to the door and placed his palm on the point where the woman said she had put hers. He gave a gentle push, and the door swung easily inward until it stopped with a bang against the wall.

Ahead of them Brunetti saw a narrow corridor and an open door, above which glowed a dim red security light. It was when he lowered his eyes to the floor that he saw why Signora Invernizzi had called the police. For about a metre in front of the far doorway, the floor was strewn with a tapestry of boxes, bottles, and phials, all of which had been stomped on, shattered, and flattened. Brunetti took a few steps until he stood just at the edge of the mess. He extended his right foot and with his toe kicked things aside to clear a place to set his foot, then stepped forward and repeated the process until he reached the second doorway, where the corridor turned right, towards the front of the pharmacy.

Brunetti crossed the corridor and went through the door on the other side into what appeared to be the pharmacists' work space, where mess became catastrophe. Dangerous looking pieces of dark brown glass patterned the floor, among them shattered fragments of what had once been majolica apothecary jars. On one piece, tiny rosebuds wound themselves in a garland among three letters: 'IUM'. Liquids and powders had bled together into a thick soup that smelled faintly of rotten eggs and something astringent that might be rubbing alcohol. Some liquid had burned its way down the front of a cabinet, leaving a wave of corroded plastic behind. A cancerous circle in the linoleum tiles in front of the cabinet exposed patches of cement floor. Two jars still stood on the shelves, but the rest had been swept to the ground, where all but one had broken. Brunetti raised his head instinctively to back away from the fiery smell and found himself looking at the crucified Christ, who had also turned his head away from the stench.

From behind him, Brunetti heard Vianello call his name; he followed the Inspector's voice to the main room of the pharmacy. Perhaps to avoid being observed from outside, whoever had broken in had confined most of his attentions to the area behind the counter and thus farthest from the windows. Here too the counters had been swept clean. All of the drawers had been pulled from the cabinets and tossed to the floor; packages and bottles had been strewn about, then apparently stamped on. Cash register and computer screen were thrown on top .of them. Like a tongue lolling from a dog's mouth, the cash drawer lay halfway out of the register and bent to one side: coins and small-denomination bills had vomited from it.

'Mamma mia’ exclaimed Vianello. ‘I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. Even that guy who went into his ex-wife's new house didn't do this much damage.'

'Her new husband stopped him, remember?' Brunetti said.

'Ah, yes. I'd forgotten. But even so, it was nothing like this.' In emphasis, Vianello pointed at the jumble of bottles and boxes that filled the space behind the counter to the height of their shins.

They heard a noise behind them and spun around to see Signora Invernizzi standing in the doorway, her bag clasped to her chest. 'Maria

Vergine’ she whispered. 'Do you think it was drug addicts again?'

Given the extent of the damage, Brunetti had already excluded that possibility. Addicts knew where the drugs were kept and knew what they wanted. They usually took the drugs, checked the cash register for anything that had been left there overnight, and let themselves out quietly. This had none of the signs of theft: quite the contrary, the money had not been touched. The destruction they gazed on spoke of rage, not greed.

'No, I don't think so, Signora,' Brunetti answered. He glanced at his watch and asked, 'Why is it that no one's come in this morning, Signora? Aside from you, that is?'

'We had the turno last week; open day and night. We don't have to open until three-thirty today, but I came in to restock the shelves before we do. It's not much, but Dottor Franchi said it's good if the other doctors get a half-day off after working like that.' She grew suddenly thoughtful at the reference to her employer and added, ‘I hope he gets here soon.'

'You called him?' Vianello asked.

‘Yes, as soon as I called you. He was in Mestre.'

'And what did you tell him, Signora?'

She seemed puzzled by the question. The same thing I told you: that someone had broken in.'

'Did you tell him about all of this?' Brunetti asked, gesturing in a wide circle at the devastation that surrounded them.

'No, sir, I didn't see it,' she reminded him. She lowered her bag and looked around for a place to put it. Finding no clean surface, she hooked it over her arm and said, 'I suppose I didn't want to be the one to tell him, even about what I saw from the door.' Then, as if she'd suddenly remembered something, she set her bag on the littered counter and quickly left the room without explanation.

Brunetti signalled Vianello to remain and followed Signora Invernizzi. She headed back down the corridor and paused outside a door that Brunetti and Vianello had passed without opening. She opened it and reached in to switch on the light. Whatever she saw in there caused her to raise her hands to her face and shake her head. Brunetti thought he heard her mutter something, and instantly he feared that the violence had found a human target.

Stepping up beside her, he took her arm and led her gently away from the doorway and from whatever it was that had so shocked her. Once she had started back towards the main room, he returned to the door and went inside. It was small, each side no more than three metres long, and must once have served as a storeroom or closet. Two walls held bookshelves, but all of the books were now on the floor. The solid wooden desk had once held a computer, but both computer and desk had been tipped on to the floor. The desk, probably because of the solidity of its construction, had suffered nothing more than a pair of parallel scratches on its surface, but the computer had not escaped harm. Pieces of the screen crunched under Brunetti's feet, and wires protruded from its eviscerated case. The keyboard appeared to have been snapped in half, though the plastic case continued to hold the two sides together. The rectangular metal case that contained the hard drive had been hit repeatedly with what he assumed was the crowbar that had been used to force entry. The metal had been deeply dented, and sharp-edged wounds gaped here and there. One corner had been smashed in, as if an attempt had been made to prise the box open. But the best the assailant had achieved was to force loose part of the back panel; inside, Brunetti could make out a flat metal board with tiny coloured dots soldered to its surface. If the other destruction had been vandalism, this was attempted murder.

Brunetti heard footsteps behind him and assumed it was Vianello. He noticed a smear of red on a piece of metal prised up from the back panel and crouched down to take a closer look. Yes, it was blood that appeared to have been wiped away hurriedly, leaving a small trace and a darker stain where the blood had flowed into the seam between the back panel and the frame. Nearby, on the white cover of a book, there was what appeared to be a single red drop, surrounded by tiny red splashlets.

'Who are you? What are you doing here?' a man's voice demanded angrily behind him.

Brunetti pushed himself quickly to his feet and turned to face the man. He was shorter than Brunetti, but thicker, especially in the arms and chest, as though he worked at a heavy physical job or had spent a lot of time swimming. He had hair the colour of apricots, thinning in front and exposing a great deal of forehead. His eyes were light, pale green perhaps, his nose thin, his mouth tight with irritation at Brunetti's continued silence.

'I'm Commissario Guido Brunetti,' Brunetti said.

The man could not hide his surprise. With evident effort, he removed the aggression from his face and replaced it with something softer.

'Are you the owner?' Brunetti asked mildly.

'Yes,' the other man answered, and, his manner warming further, extended his hand. 'Mauro Franchi.'

Brunetti shook the man's hand with conscious briskness. 'Signora Invernizzi called the Questura to report the break-in, and because my colleague and I were already in the area, they called us’ Brunetti said, speaking with the faintest hint of irritation, as if a commissario had better things to do with his time than rush off to the scene of something so ordinary as a break-in. Brunetti had no idea what made him downplay the presence of someone of the rank of commissario at the scene, but he preferred that Dottor Franchi not begin to speculate.

'How long have you been here?' Franchi asked, and again it seemed to Brunetti the sort of question he should really be asking.

'A few minutes’ Brunetti answered. 'But time enough to see the damage.'

'It's the third time’ Franchi surprised him by saying. 'We're no longer safe to conduct business in this city'

'Third time what?' Brunetti asked, ignoring Franchi's other comment. Before the other man could answer, they heard footsteps approaching from the front of the pharmacy.

Franchi wheeled around, and when Vianello appeared at the door, Signora Invernizzi a step behind, Brunetti said, 'This is my colleague, Inspector Vianello.' Franchi nodded to Vianello but did not extend his hand. He stepped out into the corridor and approached Signora Invernizzi. At a gesture from Brunetti, Vianello joined him in the smaller room. Brunetti pointed to the smear of blood on the back of the metal case and to the spots on the book.

Vianello went down on one knee. Brunetti watched his head turn slowly from left to right, and suddenly Vianello's hand shot out and he said, 'There's another one.' When Vianello pointed to it, Brunetti saw the spot on the dark tile. 'Well, if we ever get someone for it, we can do a DNA match, I suppose’ Vianello said, sounding sceptical at the thought that the test would be used for a case this minor. Or perhaps that they would ever arrest anyone for the crime.

A moment later, they heard the other two, talking softiy, move off towards the front room. Franchi's voice floated back, and Brunetti thought he heard the phrase, 'My mother won't...'

'Invernizzi say anything?' Brunetti asked.

'Only what a job it will be to clean up and put it all back together’ Vianello answered. 'And then she mentioned the insurance and said how impossible it is to get them to pay for anything. She started telling me about the daughter of a friend of hers who was knocked off a bicycle ten years ago, and the case still isn't settled.'

'Is that why you came back here?' Brunetti asked with a smile.

Vianello shrugged. 'She kept asking me if she should call the other people who work here and ask them to come in to help clean up.'

'How many of them are there?'

'Two other pharmacists and the cleaning woman. Aside from the owner, that is.'

Let’s go see what he's decided’ Brunetti said and started out of the room. He paused at the door and added, 'Call Bocchese and have him send a scene of crime crew over, will you?'

'The computer?' Vianello asked.

'If that's how the appointments were made, then I think we should take it along with us’ Brunetti answered.

In the larger room, Franchi and the woman stood on the far side of the counter, in the area used by customers. The pharmacist's hand was raised, pointing to the wall behind the counter, from which all of the drawers had been ripped.

'Should I call Donatella? Or Gianmaria, Dottore?' Brunetti heard her ask.

‘Yes, I suppose so. We have to decide what to do with the boxes.'

'Should we try to save some of them?^,

'Yes, if we can. Anything they haven't torn open or stepped on. And, with the rest, start a list for the insurance.' He said it tiredly, Sisyphus looking at the rock.

'You think it was the same ones?' she asked.

Franchi glanced at Brunetti and Vianello and said, ‘I hope the police can find that out, Eleanora.' As if hearing how close to sarcasm his tonewas, he added, The ways of the Lord are many.'

‘You said three times, Dottore,' Brunetti said, ignoring the piety. 'Do you mean this has happened twice before?'

'No’ Franchi answered, waving his hand at what lay all around them. 'But we've been robbed twice. Once it was a break-in, when they took what they wanted. The second time they came in during the day. Drug addicts. One of them had his hand in a plastic bag and said he had a gun. So we gave him the money.'

'Best thing to do’ volunteered Vianello.

'We had no intention of causing them trouble’ Franchi said. 'Let them take the money, so long as no one's hurt. Poor devils; I suppose they can't help themselves.' Did Signora Invernizzi turn and give him a strange look when he said this?

'So you think this was another robbery?' Brunetti asked.

'What else could it be?' Franchi asked impatiently.

'Indeed,' Brunetti agreed. No need, certainly, to raise that question just now.

The pharmacist raised his hands in a gesture rich with resignation and said, 'Va bene.' He turned to Signora Invernizzi. I think the others should come in; you might as well start here’ He held up his thumb and began to count on his fingers as he said, ‘I’ll call ULSS and report this, and the insurance company, then when we have a list, we can order replacement stock, and then I'll see about getting a new computer by tomorrow morning’ The resignation in his voice could not cover the anger.

The pharmacist walked to the counter and leaned over to pick up the phone, but the receiver had been ripped away. Franchi pushed himself off from the counter, walked around it, and headed into the corridor. ‘I’ll phone from my office’ he called back over his shoulder.

'Excuse me, Dottore,' Brunetti said in a loud voice. 'But I'm afraid you can't go into your office’

I can't what?' Franchi demanded, wheeling to face Brunetti.

Brunetti joined him in the corridor, and explained, "There's evidence in there, and no one can enter until we check it.'

'But I need to use the phone’

Brunetti pulled his telefonino from the pocket of his jacket and handed it to the doctor. 'Here, Dottore; you can use this’

'But the phone numbers are in there.'

‘I’m sorry,' Brunetti said with a smile that suggested that he was as much a victim of rules as was the pharmacist. ‘I’m sure if you dial twelve, they'll give you the numbers. Or you could call my secretary and she'll find them for you.' Before Franchi could protest, Brunetti added, 'And I'm afraid there's no sense in asking your colleagues to come in, Dottore, at least not until the scene of crime team has been here.'

'There was none of that last time,' Franchi said in a voice pitched between sarcasm and anger.

'This seems quite a different matter from a simple burglary, Dottore,' Brunetti said calmly.

Franchi took the telefonino with obvious bad grace but made no attempt to use it. 'What about the other things in there?' he asked, jerking his head back towards his office.

'I'm afraid the whole area has to be treated as a crime scene, Dottore.'

Franchi's face reflected even greater anger, but he said only, 'All of my records are in that computer: all of the financial information about my suppliers and all my own billing and the ULSS files. The insurance policy. I can probably get another computer delivered by this afternoon, but I'll need the disc to transfer the records.'

'I'm afraid that's impossible, Dottore,' Brunetti said, biting back the temptation to use a bit of computer jargon he had often heard and thought he understood: 'backup'. ‘I don't know if you saw, but whoever did this broke the computer open. I doubt you'd be able to retrieve anything from it.'

'Broke it open?' Franchi asked, as though it were a phrase new to him and he weren't sure what it meant.

'Prised it open at one end is a more accurate description, wouldn't you say, Vianello?' Brunetti asked the Inspector, who had just come into the room.

'That metal box thing?' Vianello asked with ox-like stupidity. 'Yes. He broke it trying to get at whatever's in it’ It sounded as if the Inspector considered the computer as little different from a piggy bank. Changing the subject, he said, 'Bocchese's on the way’

Before Franchi had time to ask, Brunetti explained, 'The scene of crime team. They'll want to take fingerprints.' With a gracious nod to Signora Invernizzi, who had followed their conversation with some interest, Brunetti said, The Signora was careful not to come inside after she opened the door, so if any prints were left, they're still here. The technicians will want to take yours,' he continued, addressing them both, 'so that they can exclude them from what they find. And those of the other people who work here; of course, but that can certainly wait a day.'

Signora Invernizzi nodded, followed by Franchi.

'And I'd prefer that you not disturb anything until my men have gone over it,' Brunetti added.

'How long will that take?' Franchi asked.

Brunetti looked at his watch and saw that it was almost eleven. 'You could come back at three, Dottore. I'm sure they'll be finished by then.'

'And can I...' Franchi started to ask but then thought better of it and said, ‘I’d like to go out and have a coffee. I'll come back later and they can take my fingerprints, all right?'

'Of course, Dottore,' Brunetti agreed.

He waited to see if the pharmacist would invite Signora Invernizzi to accompany him, but he did not. He handed Brunetti's telefonino back to him, then moved around Vianello and went down the corridor and to the exit, disappearing without a word.

'I'd like to go home, if I may,' the woman said. 'Ill come back in an hour or so, but I think I'd like to go home and lie down for a while.'

'Of course, Signora’ Brunetti said. 'Would you like the Inspector to go with you?'

She smiled for the first time and shed ten years as she did so. That's very kind. But I live just across the bridge. I'll be back before lunch, all right?'

'Certainly’ Brunetti said and walked her to the door into the calle. He stepped outside with her, wished her goodbye and stood there as she. walked away. Where the calle opened into Campo Sant'Angelo, she turned and gave him a little wave.

Brunetti returned her wave and went back into the pharmacy.

17

 

 

'"That metal box thing’' Lorenzo?' Brunetti asked. 'Is that some sort of advanced cyber-speak for "hard drive"?' He thought he did quite well in disguising his pride in being able to use the term so casually.

'No’ Vianello answered with a grin, It's my attempt to convince Dottor Franchi that he is dealing with a technical illiterate - if not two -and make him believe that neither one of us would think to wonder why he was so interested in holding on to his hard drive.'

'By keeping it from us, that is?' Brunetti asked.

'Exactly’ Vianello answered.

'What do you think's on his computer?'

Vianello shrugged. 'Something he doesn't want us to see: that's for certain. It could be the fake appointments’ Vianello considered the question a little longer and added, 'Or he's looking at websites or chatting in places where he ought not to be’

'Is there a way you can find out?' Brunetti asked.

Did Vianello smile? 'I couldn't’ he said, and before Brunetti could ask, added, 'nor could Signorina Elettra’ He saw Brunetti's surprise and went on. 'It's physical damage to the hard drive, and neither one of us is able to work with that, recovering information when the disc's been damaged. You need a real technician for that.'

'But you know someone?' Brunetti prompted.

'She does.' A strange expression flitted across Vianello's face: Brunetti had seen something like it on the faces of men who had killed out of jealousy. 'She won't tell me who he is.' He sighed. ‘I imagine she'll want to pass it on to him.'

'Then I'll have Bocchese take it back with him’ Brunetti said, his mind busy with speculation about the hard disc and what it might contain. With a certain chagrin, he realized how limited his imagination was. 'If she takes it to this person, do you think he'll be able to find what's on there?' he finally asked Vianello.

'It depends on how bad the damage is’ the Inspector answered. Then he added, speaking very slowly, 'But Signorina Elettra did say he's very good and that she's learned a great deal from him.'

'But nothing else about him?'

'He could be the former governor of Banca d'ltalia, for all I know’ Vianello answered, then smiled and added, lie's got a lot of free time now, hasn't he?'

Brunetti pretended not to have heard.

Bocchese and the scene of crime team showed up after about twenty minutes, and Vianello and Brunetti stood around for an hour or so while the door, the counters, and the computers were photographed and dusted for fingerprints. Brunetti explained about the bloodstains and the hard disc and asked Bocchese's men to take eveiything back to the Questura.

Signora Invernizzi returned a little after noon and stood on the customer side of the counter while one of the technicians took her fingerprints. Dottor Franchi came in while she was still there and, with far less grace, also had his taken. He asked when they would be finished because he wanted to get his pharmacy ready to open the next day, if possible. Bocchese's assistant told him that they would be gone in an hour, and Franchi said he would go and find a fabbro to change the lock on the side door. Brunetti waited to see if Signora Invernizzi would bring up the subject of una porta blindata, but she did not.

When both of them were gone, Brunetti went back to the small room, where Bocchese was busy scraping a drop of blood from a point low on the wall. On the floor beside him lay a sealed plastic evidence bag, the book with the other drop of blood already inside it.

Toil get a look at the whole place?' Brunetti asked when Bocchese glanced up at him. ‘Yes.' 'And?'

'And somebody doesn't like him’ came Bocchese's reply. Then, after a moment, 'Or doesn't like pharmacists, or computers, or boxes of medicine or, for all I know, cash registers.'

'Always trying to interpret things, aren't you, Bocchese, and make them fit into some master plan?' Brunetti asked with a laugh. To the technician, a cigar was always a cigar, and a series of events was a series of events and not cause for speculation.

'What about the blood?' Brunetti asked.

"There's something that looks like a piece of skin and a bit of leather caught under this flange that got pulled up from the back’ Bocchese said, pointing with the tips of a pair of tweezers to where Brunetti had seen the streak of blood on the casing of the hard drive.

'And that means?' Before Bocchese could answer, Brunetti said, 'If you tell me it means there's a piece of skin and a piece of leather there, I'll never let you sharpen Paola's kitchen knives again’

'And tell her I refused, I imagine?' Bocchese asked.

'Yes’

'Then I'd say,' the technician began, 'that he had trouble prising at it with the crowbar, or whatever it was, tried to move the tip of it to a more effective place, and tore his glove and cut his hand in the process’ 'Cut it badly?'

Bocchese took some time to answer this. I'd say no. It was probably only a small cut’ He anticipated Brunetti's thought and said, 'So, no, I wouldn't bother to call the hospital and ask if anyone's come in to have a hand sewn up today.' After a moment, with audible reluctance, Bocchese added, 'And I'd also say that this is a very impatient as well as a very angry person’

'Thanks,' Brunetti said. 'After you take a sample of the blood on that,' he added, pointing at the hard disc, 'could you see that it goes to Signorina Elettra?'

As if he found this the most normal thing in the world, Bocchese nodded and returned his attention to the bloodstain.

At the front of the shop, Brunetti found Vianello talking with one of the photographers. ‘You ready to go?' he asked.

Brunetti explained to the technician that the owner would be back soon with a locksmith. As he and Vianello walked past the door to the side room, Brunetti called goodbye to Bocchese, who was still on his knees, leaning over to study the electric socket.

Outside, Vianello asked, 'Want to walk?' and it seemed like the best of ideas to Brunetti.

The day, which had started foggy and damp and in a very bad mood, had decided to treat itself to some sun. Without discussion, Brunetti and Vianello turned right and crossed the bridge towards Campo San Fantin. They passed the theatre without really seeing it, bom eager to reach Via XXII Marzo and then the Piazza, where the promise of warmth would surely be fulfilled.

As they approached the Piazza, Brunetti watched the people they passed, at the same time half listening to Vianello's lesson on how information was preserved on the hard disc of a computer and how it was possible to retrieve it, even long after the user thought it had been erased.

He saw a group of tourists approach and judged them to be Eastern Europeans, even before he gave the decision any conscious thought. He studied them as they walked past him: sallow complexions; blond hair, either natural or assisted in that direction; cheap shoes, one remove from cardboard; plastic jackets that had been dyed and treated in an unsuccessful attempt to make them resemble leather. Brunetti had always felt a regard for these tourists because they looked at things. Probably too poor to buy most of what they saw, they still gazed about them with respect and awe and unbridled delight. With their cheap clothes and their bad haircuts and their packed lunches, who knew what it cost them to come here? Many, he knew, slept for nights on buses in order to spend a single day walking and looking and not shopping. They were so unlike the jaded Americans, who had of course seen bigger and better, or the world-weary Western Europeans, who also believed they had but were too sophisticated to say so.

As they entered the Piazza, the Inspector, who appeared not to have registered the tourists, said, 'The whole world's gone mad with fear of avian flu, and we have more pigeons than people.'

‘I beg your pardon,' Brunetti said, his attention still on the tourists.

‘I read it in the paper two days ago,' Vianello said. 'There's about sixty thousand of us, and the current population of pigeons - well, the one given in the paper, which is not the same thing - is more than a hundred thousand.'

'That can't be possible’ Brunetti said, suddenly disgusted by the thought. Then, more soberly, 'Who'd count them, anyway, and how'd they do it?'

Vianello shrugged. 'Who knows how any official number is detennined?' Suddenly his mood brightened, either at the growing warmth of the Piazza or the absurdity of the subject, and he asked, 'You think there are people working for the Comune who are paid to go around and count pigeons?'

Brunetti considered this for a moment and answered, 'It's not as if pigeons stay in the same place all day long, is it? So some of them might have been counted twice.'

'Or not at all,' Vianello suggested and then added, suddenly venomous, 'God, I hate them.'

'Me, too,' Brunetti agreed. 'I think most people do. Loathsome things’

'But just touch one of them’ Vianello went on, heated now, 'and you've got the animalisti screaming about cruelty to animals and our responsibility to all God's little creatures.' He threw up his hands in disgust or confusion. Brunetti was about to mention his surprise that such talk could come from the Questura's own paragon of all things environmental, when his eye shifted to the facade of the Basilica and those absurdly asymmetrical cupolas, the whole lopsided glory of it.

Brunetti stopped walking and put his hand up to quiet Vianello. In an entirely different voice, almost solemn, he asked, 'We're lucky, aren't we?'

Vianello glanced aside at Brunetti and then followed his gaze to San Marco and the flags whipping in the breeze, the mosaics above the doors. The Inspector stood there for some time, looking at the church, then glanced to the right, across the water and towards San Giorgio with its ever-vigilant angel. In an entirely uncharacteristic gesture, Vianello raised his free arm and moved it in an arc that encompassed the buildings around them as well as those across the water, then he turned to Brunetti and patted his arm, quickly, twice. For a moment, Brunetti thought the Inspector was going to speak, but he remained silent and moved away towards the Riva degli Schiavoni and the sun-splashed walk down to the Questura.

They decided to stop and have lunch on the way but would not do so until they had put at least two bridges between themselves and San Marco. Vianello knew a small trattoria on Via Garibaldi, where they had penne with a sauce of peppers, grilled melanzane, and pecorino affumicato, followed by a baked roll of turkey breast filled with herbs and pancetta.

During the meal, Vianello attempted to explain the basic operating principles of the computer but was forced to abandon the attempt halfway through the pasta. He was reduced to saying, 'She'll have this guy look at it, and then weTl see what's possible.'

Neither wanted dessert, even though the owner swore that the pears in the cake came from his own trees on Burano. Brunetti signalled for  coffee, his mind still on the tangible reality of the pharmacy. 'No normal person did that,' he said with no prelude.

'Vandals aren't normal people,' answered Vianello. 'Neither are drug addicts.'

'Come on, Lorenzo, think about what we saw there. It's not a couple of kids on a railway bridge with a can of spray paint.' The coffee came and Brunetti spent a great deal of time stirring sugar into it, recalling the scene inside the pharmacy.

Vianello finished his own coffee and set down the cup. 'All right,' he said, ‘I agree. But why would someone want to do a thing like that? If anything, the doctors he's involved with would do anything to keep us from paying attention to him, or to them.'

'Are we agreed’ Brunetti asked, 'that it's not a coincidence, that he's not just any pharmacist or any store chosen at random?'

Vianello let out a puff of air to show how unlikely he considered this.

'Then why?' Brunetti asked.

'Let’s hope Elettra's friend can tell us that’ Vianello said and raised his hand to call for the bill.

 

 

18

 

 

Autumn advanced. The days grew shorter, and after the clocks went back, they grew shorter still. As happened every year, Paola grew snappish during the first days when darkness arrived sooner, causing her husband and children to keep their heads down until her usual spirits returned, when family life would revert to normal.

Brunetti had transferred his professional attention to his ongoing cases, and the eye he kept on the Pedrolli case grew increasingly inattentive. Though he twice called the social services, he was unable to discover the whereabouts of the child. The reports he wrote grew shorter and then ceased entirely for lack of information, but still he could not banish

Dottor Pedrolli from his mind. Weary of the need to seek information indirectly and always having to find arcane ways to induce people to divulge what they knew, Brunetti checked his notebook for the number of Marvilli's office and dialled it. 'Marvilli’

'Captain, this is Brunetti. I'm calling about Dottor Pedrolli.'

'I'm afraid you might be too late, Commissario’

'Why is that?'

'The case has been pretty much closed.' 'Could you tell me what that means, Captain?' 'That all of the major charges against him have been dropped’ 'Leaving which ones?' 'Only falsification of a state document.' 'The birth certificate?'

‘Yes. It's unlikely to get him anything more than a fine.' ‘I see.'

Is that all, Commissario?'

'No. I have only one question, really: it’s why I called you.'

'I'm not sure I can answer any other questions about this case, Commissario’

'Mine is a simple one. Captain, if you'd hear it’

'Very well’

'How is it that you knew about Pedrolli in the first place?'

'I thought I told you that.'

'No, Captain, you didn't.'

The documents I was given before the operation referred to an anonymous phone call.'

'An anonymous phone call? You mean someone can call and make an accusation, and the Carabinieri... they will respond?'

'I think I know what you stopped yourself from saying, Commissario: that the Carabinieri will break into a person's home in response to an anonymous phone call?... Are you still there, Commissario?'

'Yes, I am. Captain. Let me repeat my question, if I may.'

'Of course.'

'Could you tell me why you chose to respond to this particular call in the way you did?'

'Even with your graceful rephrasing, Cornmissario, I'm not sure I should answer that question, especially now that it looks as if very little, if anything, will come of the whole thing.'

'I'd be very grateful if you would. Captain. More to satisfy my personal curiosity than anything else. If the charges have been dropped, then.. ‘

'You sound like you mean that, Commissario, about your personal curiosity.' 'I do’

'Then I can tell you that the person who made the call - at least according to the report I read - provided certain information that added credibility to his claim that the Pedrolli adoption was illegal.'

'"His?"

The report I read referred to a man.'

‘I’m sorry to have interrupted you, Captain.'

‘It's nothing... Apparently, he gave the name of the woman, the name of the hospital where the child was born, and the probable date of birth. He also mentioned that money had changed hands.'

'And was this enough?'

'Enough for what, Commissario?'

'To convince you that the caller was telling the truth?'

'My guess, Commissario - and it is only a guess - is that the fact that he knew the woman's name and the other details was enough to convince my colleagues to investigate the accusation or at least to see if this woman's name was on the birth certificate of Dottor Pedrolli's child and if it was, to go and question her about the circumstances.'

'How long did it take them to do that?'

'Do what, Commissario?'

'Question her.'

'I don't remember exactly, but I think the call came in about a week before we ... before we went to Dottor Pedrolli's. As it turned out, the Verona command was working on similar cases at the same time. It seems they aren't related; that is, Pedrolli's isn't related to the others.'

'So it was just bad luck for Pedrolli?'

'Yes, I suppose you could say that, Commissario.'

'And convenient for you, as well?'

'If you'll allow me to say this, Commissario, you sound as if you think we'd do something like that without being sure.'

'I'm afraid you're right. Captain.'

'We don't do these things rashly, Commissario. And for what it’s worth, I have a child, a girl. She's only one.'

'Mine are older.'

'I don't think that changes anything.' 'No, probably not. Is there any news of him?' 'Dottor Pedrolli?' 'The baby.'

'No, there isn't. And there can't be: you must know that. Once a child is in the care of the social services, we're not given any further information.'

I see ... Tell me one last thing. Captain, if you will.' If I can.'

'Is there any way that Dottor Pedrolli could ever ... ?'

'See the baby?' ‘Yes.'

'It’s not likely. I'd say impossible. The boy isn't his, you see.'

'How do you know that, Captain? If I might ask.'

'May I say something without risk of offending you, Commissario?' 'Yes. Certainly.'

'We're not a gang of jackbooted thugs here, you know.'

'I hardly meant to suggest...'

‘I’m sure you didn't, Commissario. I simply, wanted to make this clear, first.' 'And second?'

To tell you that, before the operation was authorized, the mother of the baby testified that the child was her husband's and not that of the man whose name was on the birth certificate.'

'So she could get her child back?'

'You have a very idealised vision of motherhood, Commissario, if I might make that observation. The woman made it clear that she did not want the baby back. In fact, this is one of the reasons my colleagues in Cosenza believed her.'

'Will it affect her chances of being allowed to stay here?'

'Probably not, no.'

'Ah.'

'"Ah", indeed, Commissario. Believe me, the baby's not his. We knew that before we went in there that night.'

‘I see. Well, then ... thank you very much, Captain. You've been very helpful.'

‘I’m glad to learn you think so, Commissario. If it would put your mind at rest, I could send you a copy of our report. Shall I email it to you there?'

It would be a great kindness.' 'I'll do it now, Commissario.' 'Thank you. Captain.' 'You're welcome. Arrivederci.' 'Arrivederci, Capitano’

 

*   *   *

 

A copy of the deposition arrived less than an hour later. It had been made by the Albanian woman whose name was on the birth certificate of Pedrolli's son. It had been signed four days before the Carabinieri raid and had been compiled over two days of testimony. She had been located by a simple computer search, in Cosenza, where she had, two days after registering the birth of her child to an Italian father, been granted a permesso di soggiorno. When questioned, she originally maintained that her child had been sent back to Albania to live with his grandparents. It was, she insisted, sheer coincidence that her husband, also Albanian and illegally resident in Italy, had bought a car two days after she was released from the hospital: he had been working as a mason, she explained, and had been saving money for months in order to buy the car. Nor was there any connection between her son's disappearance and the three months' deposit her husband had paid on an apartment the same day he bought the car.

Later in the questioning, she began to insist that the Italian man, whose name she could not remember and whom she had a certain difficulty in describing, was the father of the child, but when she was threatened with arrest and deportation unless she told the truth, she changed her story and claimed that an Italian man who said his wife was unable to have a child had contacted her in the weeks just before she gave birth. Her first version suggested that the man had found her on his own; no one had introduced him to her. But when the possibility of extradition was mentioned to her again, she said that he had been introduced to her by one of the doctors in the hospital - she could not remember which - who said that the man who wanted to talk to her was also a doctor. After the child was born, she had agreed to let the doctor's name be on the birth certificate because she believed her son would have a better chance at a decent life if he were raised as an Italian, in an Italian family. She finally admitted that the man had given her some money, but as a gift, not a payment. No, she could not remember how much it had been.

The woman and her husband were now under house arrest, though the husband was allowed to continue to work: the question of her permesso di soggiorno was being examined by a magistrate. When he finished reading, Brunetti was left wondering why whoever had questioned her had so easily accepted her explanation of how Pedrolli had contacted her: he might just as easily have descended from a cloud. 'Had been introduced to her by one of the doctors in the hospital’ the woman had stated. But which one? And for what reason?

At a certain point, Brunetti realized that - in a manner frighteningly reminiscent of Bianca Marcolini - the woman had expressed no interest in the child or in what had happened to him. He slipped the papers into his desk drawer and went home.

*   *   *

Before dinner Brunetti managed to return to the travels of the Marquis de Custine. With the French aristocrat as guide and companion, he found himself in St Petersburg, contemplating the Russian soul, which de Custine observed was 'intoxicated with slavery'. Brunetti let the open book fall to his lap as he considered these words and was brought out of his reverie by Paola, who sat down beside him.

‘I forgot to tell you,' she said.

Brunetti dragged himself back from the Nevsky Prospekt and said. Tell me what?'

'About Bianca Marcolini.'

'Ah, thank you,' he said.

‘I asked around, but not a lot. Most people know the name because of the father, of course.'

Brunetti nodded.

‘I asked my father about him. I told you he knew him, didn't I?'

Brunetti nodded again. 'And?' he asked.

'And he said Marcolini is a man to be reckoned with. He made his fortune himself, you know.' She paused, then added, 'Some people still find that an intoxicating idea.' Her voice was rich with a disdain that only those born into great wealth can experience.

'My father says he has friends everywhere: in local government, in regional government, even in Rome. In the last few years, he's come to control an enormous number of votes.'

'Suppressing a news story would be easy for him, men?' Brunetti asked.

'Child's play’ she said, a phrase that struck Brunetti with an odd resonance. 'And the marriage?'

'"Chiesa dei Miracoli garlanded with flowers": the usual. She works as a financial adviser for a bank; he's the assistant primario in pediatria at the Ospedale Civile.'

None of these statements seemed to have merited the excitement Brunetti thought he heard in her voice, something experience told him came from revelations still unspoken. 'And the non-official news?'he asked.

'The baby, of course’ she said, and he registered that she was finally in her stride.

'Of course,' he repeated and smiled.

'The gossip among their friends was that he had had a short affair with a woman - not even an affair: just a few days - when he was in Cosenza for a medical conference. I've asked a number of people who know them, and that's the story I was told every time.'

'Was it your father who told you about this?'

'No’ she answered instantly, surprised that he would think her father capable of gossip. Then, in explanation, she offered, 'I saw my mother this afternoon and asked her about them.' Paola had come by her inquisitiveness about other people's lives honestly: similarly, the Contessa's emeralds would some day be hers.

'So this is the official story?' he asked.

She had to think for a while before she answered. It sounds true and people seem to believe it is. After all, if s the sort of thing they want to believe, isn't it? If s the stuff of film, cheap fiction. The erring husband returns to the hearth and the long-suffering wife forgives him. Not only forgives him, but agrees to take the little cuckoo into the nest and raise it as their own. Heart-warming reunion, the rebirth of love: Rhett and Scarlett together again for ever.' She paused a moment and then added, It certainly plays better than saying that they went down to the market, bought a baby, and brought it home.'

'You sound more mordantly cynical than usual, my dove’ Brunetti said, picking up her hand and kissing the tips of her fingers.

She pulled her hand away, but with a smile, and said, 'Thank you, Guido' Then, in a more serious tone, she continued, 'As I said, people seemed to believe it, or at least wanted to. The Gamberinis know them, and Gabi told me that they went to dinner there about six months after they brought the baby home. Well... he brought the baby home, but she said the reunion might not have continued so happily.'

‘You really love gossip, don't you?' he asked, wishing she had brought him a glass of wine.

'Yes, I suppose I do’ she answered, sounding surprised at the realization. "You think that's why I love reading novels so much?'

‘Probably’ he said, then asked, 'In what way not a happy reunion?'

'Gabi didn't actually say. People usually don't. But it was pretty clear from what she said, well, more from the way she said it. You know how people are.'

How he wished that were true, Brunetti thought. 'Did she speculate about the reason?'

Paola closed her eyes, and he watched her replay the conversation. 'No, not really.'

'Would you like a glass of wine?' he asked.

'Yes. And then we can have dinner.'

He took her hand and kissed it again by way of thanks. 'White or red?' he asked.

She chose white, probably because of the risotto with leeks, which started the meal. The children had recently gone back to school, so they spent much of the meal reporting on what their classmates had done during the summer. One girl in Chiara's class had spent two months in Australia and returned disgruntled that she had traded summer for winter and then returned to autumn. Another had worked at an ice-cream shop on the island of Santorini and came back with a passable knowledge of spoken German. Raffi's best friend had backpacked from Newfoundland to Vancouver, though the quotation marks with which Raffi pronounced 'back-packed' was rich with a suggestion of trains and aeroplanes.

Brunetti did his best to follow the talk that swirled above the table, but he found himself constantly distracted by the sight of them, assailed by an overwhehrting sense of possession: these were his children. Part of him was in them, the part that would go on into their children, and then into the next generation. Try as he might, however, he could recognize little of his physical self in them: only Paola seemed to have been copied. There was her nose, there the texture of her hair and that unruly curl just behind her left ear. As she spoke, Chiara waved a hand to dismiss something that had been said to her, and the gesture was Paola's.

The next course was orata with lemon, further reason to justify the choice of white wine. Brunetti began eating, but halfway through his portion, his attention was drawn again to Chiara, who was now in full denunciation of her English teacher.

'The subjunctive? Do you know what she told me when I asked about it?' Chiara demanded, voice rich with remembered astonishment as she glanced round the table to see that the others were prepared to respond in similar vein. When she had their attention, she said, 'That we'd get to it next year.' The noise with which she set down her fork gave ample expression of her disapproval.

Paola shook her head in sympathy. 'Next year,' she repeated, the conversation somehow having crossed over into English. Unbelievable.'

Chiara turned to her father, hoping perhaps that he would express similar amazement. But she stopped and studied his unresponsive face. She tilted her head to one side, then to the other. Finally she said in an entirely conversational voice, as if in response to a question he had posed. 'I left it in school, Papa’ When he said nothing, she said, 'No, I didn't bring it home with me today.'

As if emerging from a trance, Brunetti said,

‘I’m sorry, Chiara. What didn't you bring home today?' 'My second head.'

Utterly at a loss as to what might have occurred at the table while he was staring at his children, Brunetti said, ‘I don't understand. What second head?'

'The one you've been looking for all night, Papa. I just wanted to tell you I didn't bring it home: that’s why you don't see it.' To emphasize this, she raised her hands to either side of her head and waved the fingers in the empty air on either side of it.

Raffi guffawed, and when he looked at Paola, she was smiling.

'Ah, yes’ Brunetti said with some chagrin, returning his attention to his fish. ‘I hope you left it in a safe place.'

There were pears for dessert.

 

19

 

It was late the following afternoon when Vianello came into Brunetti's office, his expression rich with the delight that comes of having been right when others have thought you wrong.

'It's taken a long time, but it was worth it,' the Inspector said. He came over to Brunetti's desk and placed some papers on it.

Brunetti narrowed his eyes and raised his chin by way of enquiry.

'Signorina Elettra's friend’ Vianello explained.

She had many friends, Brunetti knew, and he could not recall which one was at the moment contributing to her extra-legal activities. 'Which friend?' 'The hacker’ Vianello explained, surprising Brunetti by the ease with which he pronounced the ’h'. 'The one we gave the hard disc to.' Before Brunetti could ask, Vianello added, 'Yes, I got it back to Dottor Franchi the next day, but not before her friend had made a copy of everything that was on it.'

'Ah, that friend’ Brunetti said and reached for the papers. 'What's Franchi been up to on his computer?'

"'No kiddie porn and no Internet shopping: I can tell you that right now’ Vianello answered, though his tiger shark smile did not lessen.

'But?' Brunetti asked.

'But it seems he's found his way into the ULSS computer system.'

'Isn't that how he makes the appointments?' Brunetti asked. 'How the other pharmacists do, too?'

'Yes’ Vianello agreed and pulled up a chair. 'He does, and they do’ he said, prodding at Brunetti with a tone that forced him to ask another question.

Which he did. 'And what else does he do when he's in there?'

'According to what Signorina Elettra's friend told us, it would seem that he's found a way to bypass their log-in.'

'Which means what?'

'It gives him access to other parts of their system’ Vianello said and waited for Brunetti's reaction, as though he thought Brunetti should leap to his feet and cry 'Eureka!'

He feared his confession would lower him in Vianello's estimation, but Brunetti knew he couldn't bluff his way through this one, so he said, 'I think you'd better explain it to me, Lorenzo.'

The little Spartan boy with the fox eating away at his vitals could have kept no straighter a face than did Vianello. ‘It means he can access the central computer and examine the medical files of anyone for whom he has the ULSS number.'

'His clients?'

'Exactly.'

Brunetti put his elbow on his desk and rubbed his hand across his mouth a few times as he considered the implications of this. Access to those files meant access to all information about medication, hospitalization, diseases cured or under treatment. It meant that an unauthorized person would have access to potentially secret parts of another person's life.

'AIDS,' Brunetti said. After a long pause, he added, 'Drug rehabilitation. Methadone.'

'Venereal diseases,' contributed Vianello.

'Abortions,' added Brunetti, then added, 'If they're his clients, he knows whether they're married, about their family lives, where they work, who their friends are.'

'The friendly family pharmacist; known you since you were a kid,' added Vianello.

'How many?' Brunetti asked.

'He's looked into the files of about thirty of his clients,' Vianello said, pausing to allow Brunetti to register the implications of this. 'Her friend says he won't be able to send us the actual files until tomorrow’

Brunetti let out a low whistle, then drew their attention back to the original reason for their interest in Dottor Franchi. 'And the appointments?'

'He's made more than a hundred in the last two years’ Before Brunetti could express his surprise at the number, Vianello said, "That's only one a week, remember’

Brunetti nodded. 'Has this friend of Signorina Elettra... does he have a name, by the way?' he asked.

'No’ Vianello said in a curiously bland voice.

'Have you checked to see which of these appointments actually took place?' Brunetti asked.

'He sent her the final list of the appointments only this morning’ Vianello said. 'And it seems that all of the appointments Franchi made were kept.' When Brunetti said nothing, the Inspector continued, 'She's already run a check on the other pharmacists. One of them has scheduled only seventeen appointments in the last two years, and all of them were kept: we spoke to the people. Andrea doesn't use the system, so he's off the list. In the other case, she checked the record of appointments in the files in the hospitals here and in Mestre, and in almost all cases the people were listed as having shown up for the appointments he scheduled’ Vianello could barely contain his excitement when he said, 'But one of the pharmacists scheduled three appointments for people who didn't need medical help.'

'Tell me, Lorenzo,' Brunetti said to save time.

They're dead,' Vianello said.

‘You mean, from what happened to them during the appointments?' asked an astonished Brunetti, wondering how something like this could have happened and he not be aware of it.

'No. They were dead when the appointments were made.' Vianello allowed himself to savour, and Brunetti to grasp, that information, and then he continued, ‘It looks like he got careless, the pharmacist, and just started punching in the patient numbers of customers at the pharmacy: perhaps he thought they had moved away or perhaps...' and here Vianello gave the small pause he always made before he dropped what he considered to be a bomb. 'Perhaps he's starting to lose his memory. At that age.'

'Gabetti?' asked Brunetti.

'None other,' responded a grinning Vianello.

'All right, Lorenzo. You win,' Brunetti said with a smile. Tell me about the appointments he scheduled for these dead people.'

'In each case, the doctor recorded on his computer that he had seen the patient, made a diagnosis - it was always something innocuous - and then billed the health service for the appointment.'

'Very careless,' Brunetti agreed. 'Or very bold. What about the doctors?'

'It's always the same three, and in each case they recorded the appointments and requested payment’ Vianello said. Almost reluctantly, Vianello added, 'Franchi never scheduled an appointment with any of those three doctors.'

'I wonder what else he was doing, though,' Brunetti said, then asked, 'Why can't her friend send the files until tomorrow?'

'Computer things,' said Vianello.

'I'm not a Neanderthal, you know.' Though Brunetti smiled as he said this, he came across as no less defensive.

'Signorina Elettra told me it has to do with the way Franchi protected the files: each one requires a different code to get into it, and then you have to go back and find the patient number, using a different access code ... do you want me to go on?' Vianello asked.

Brunetti's smile became rueful. 'Tomorrow?'

'Yes.'

‘Until then?'

'Until then, we'll keep calling the patients Gabetti made appointments for and asking them if they were satisfied with the treatment they received. And then we can think about asking the doctors to come in and have a word with us.'

Brunetti said, 'No, I'd like to wait until we know what Franchi is up to. Are you sure he wasn't suspicious that you held on to his computer for a day?'

It looked as though Vianello had to stop himself from clapping his hands in delight when he heard the question. ‘I had Alvise take it back’ he said.

Brunetti laughed out loud.

He left the Questura at five, his conscience at peace at the thought that his wife, who had said she would bring him more information about Pedrolli, was unlikely to do so by coming to his office. Whatever she had learned, Brunetti was forced to admit that it had probably become irrelevant by now. Whatever charges might be brought against Pedrolli, they were likely to be of the kind that would evaporate at the wave of a chequebook or at some other manifestation of Bianca Marcolini's father's power.

He let his feet and his whim take him where they pleased, and after a time he found himself standing at the foot of the bridge that led to the entrance to Palazzo Querini Stampalia. The man at the desk knew Brunetti and waved aside his attempt to pay for a ticket.

He went upstairs to the gallery, where he had not been for some time. How he loved to look at these portraits, not so much because of their beauty as paintings but for the resemblance of so many of them to people he saw every day. Indeed, the portrait of Gerolomo Querini, painted almost five hundred years ago, bore an almost photographic likeness to Vianello - well, to what Vianello had looked like as a younger man. He savoured these faces and looked forward to encountering them again in the order he had become accustomed to over the years.

His favourite was the Bellini Presentation in the Temple, and, as always, he allowed himself to come to it last. And saw that child, the swaddled Jesus, being passed back to his mother by the high priest Simeon. The baby's body was bound tight by the encircling strips of cloth, his arms trapped to his sides with only the tips of his fingers wriggling free. At the sight of him, Brunetti's thoughts returned to Pedrolli's child, similarly bound, if by the decisions of the state. The mother of the child in the painting held him protectively in both hands; the look she passed to the high priest across the infant's bound body was cool and sceptical. Brunetti noticed for the first time how her scepticism was echoed in the faces of everyone else in the painting, especially in the eyes of a young man on the far right, who gazed out at the viewer as if to ask how he could expect anything good to come of what was going on here.

Abruptly Brunetti turned from the painting and walked back to the portraits in the other rooms, hoping that the more tranquil faces on the portraits by Bombelli and Tiepolo would erase the uneasy feeling that had come over him at the sight of that trapped child.

Brunetti was unusually inattentive during dinner, nodding when Paola or the children spoke with one another and contributing little to the conversation. Afterwards, he returned to the living room and to St Petersburg, where he encountered his Marquis in a reflective mood, observing of Russia that it was a place where the taste for the superfluous holds sway over a people who are still unacquainted with the necessary'. Brunetti closed his eyes to consider the contemporary truth of this.

He heard Paola's footsteps and, without opening his eyes, said, 'Nothing changes, nothing at all.'

She recognized the book and said, 'I knew nothing good could come of your reading that book.'

I know it's not politically correct, especially when the leaders of our two great countries are such good buddies, but it sounds like a dreadful place then, and it sounds like a dreadful place now.' He heard the clink of glasses and, opening one eye, saw her place two on the table in front of him.

'Read Tolstoy,' she advised him. 'Hell make you like it more.'

'The country or the book?' Brunetti asked, eyes still closed.

"lime for gossip,' she announced, ignoring his question. She tapped his feet and he pulled them back to create room enough for her to sit.

He opened his eyes then and took the glass she handed him. He sipped, took a deep breath and inhaled the essence of grappa, and sipped again. Is that the Gaia?' he asked.

'We've had the bottle since Christmas. With any luck we'll get another one this year, so I see no reason we shouldn't drink it.'

'Do you think there's grappa in heaven?' Brunetti asked.

'Since there's no heaven, no, there's no grappa in heaven’ she answered,-then added, 'which is even more reason to drink it while we can.'

'I'm helpless in the face of your logic’ Brunetti said, emptied his glass, and handed it to her.

'I'll be back in a moment.'

'Good’ Brunetti said and closed his eyes again.

Brunetti felt, rather than saw, Paola get up from the sofa. He listened as she went into the kitchen, heard her moving around and then come back into the living room. Glass clinked against glass, liquid poured, and then she said, 'Here.'

Suddenly curious about how long he could keep his eyes closed, Brunetti stuck his hand in the air, fingers waving. She gave him the glass, he heard another clink, another glug, and then he felt the sofa shake as she sat back down.

'Salute’ she said, and he took a sip from the glass he couldn't see. Again he had a foretaste of heaven.

'Tell me’ he asked.

'You're welcome’ she answered and then segued seamlessly into, 'At the beginning, people thought Pedrolli was nervous or embarrassed that they would make jokes about him, but as soon as it became obvious how crazy he was about his son, there was no chance that anyone would make fun of him. The only talk was nice talk, or so I was told.'

'And the Rhett and Scarlett reunion you said didn't work?'

'I didn't say it: I was told it’ she corrected him. 'According to a number of people, he was always the loving partner, and she was the one who was loved, right from the beginning. But after the son arrived, the equilibrium changed.'

How?' he asked, sensing from her voice that the answer to this would not be the obvious one that the wife neglected the husband for the new child.

'He transferred his affection to the son ... or so I was told’ she said, reminding Brunetti of how careful Paola always was to provide citations for her gossip.

'And where did the wife transfer hers?' he asked.

'Not to the child, apparently,' she said. 'But that would be understandable, I suppose, if the baby wasn't hers to begin with and if her husband began to pay more attention to the baby than to her.'

'Even if she didn't much want these attentions any longer?' Brunetti asked.

Paola leaned against him and rested her elbow on his knees. 'That doesn't make any difference, Guido. You know that.'

'What doesn't?'

'Whether she wanted his affections or not. She still wanted to be the object of them.'

'That doesn't make any sense,' he said.

She was silent for so long that Brunetti finally opened his eyes and looked at her. She had her face buried in her hands and was shaking her head from side to side.

'All right, what have I said?' he asked.

She gave him a level look. 'Even if a woman isn't happy to have them, she still doesn't want them to go to anyone else,' she said.

'But it's their son, for heaven's sake.'

'His son,' Paola corrected him, then added for emphasis, 'Not theirs, but his.'

'Perhaps not,' Brunetti said, then told her the contents of the Carabinieri report.

'Who the biological father was really doesn't make any difference,' Paola insisted. 'To Pedrolli, the boy is his son. And from what I heard today, my guess is that she never really thought of the child as hers.'

How much had Pedrolli actually told his wife? She claimed that he had told her the truth, but what was the truth? Brunetti imagined that the Albanian woman, threatened with extradition, would have told the authorities whatever it was she thought they wanted to hear and whatever would make them view her with greatest sympathy. If they asked her if Dottor Pedrolli had promised to raise the boy as his son, this was at least something she could take credit for, if only because it demonstrated a desire to ensure that her son would have a better life. Far better to admit to this, even if money had changed hands, than to admit she had sold her son to someone without much caring where the child would end up.

And what of Pedrolli? Was he to endure his life like the parents of children who are the victims of actual kidnappings? To wonder - for ever - if the child was alive or dead? To spend the rest of his life searching for that remembered face in the face of every child, teenaged boy, man of about the right age?

"'Oh, to lose all father now,'" Brunetti said.

 

20

 

Brunetti's sleep was disturbed, not by excess of grappa, but by thoughts of the Pedrolli child. How much would he remember of those first months of his life? What was the future psychological cost of being taken from a loving home and placed in a public institution?

Between sleeping and waking, Brunetti told himself repeatedly to let it all go, to forget Pedrolli, to forget the sight of the man as he lay in the hospital bed, and most of all to forget about his son. Brunetti was uninterested in either the legal or the biological realities: it sufficed for him that Pedrolli had claimed the child as his own and that the child's natural mother had been willing to let him go. And that the doctor loved the child.

What he could not fathom were the feelings of Bianca Marcolini, but he did not feel able, during that long night, to wake Paola, sleeping quietly beside him, and ask her what a woman would feel. Why should Paola understand it any better than he? Were he to ask, she would probably assail him for the most blatant sort of sexist thinking: surely a man could understand a woman's feelings? But that was precisely what troubled Brunetti, the absence in Bianca Marcolini of what Paola would, again, assail him for thinking of as a woman's feelings. If the reports given to Paola were accurate, then Bianca Marcolini had shown little evidence of maternal feelings to the people Paola had talked to or to Brunetti himself.

Some time before six, an idea came to Brunetti of how to learn more about Bianca Marcolini and her feelings towards the child. Soon after he thought of it, he drifted off to sleep, and when he woke again, the idea was still with him. He lay there, looking at the ceiling. Three bells rang: soon it would be seven and he would get up and make coffee, bring some back to Paola. She had a class that morning and had asked him to wake her before he went to work.

Well, this was before he went to work, wasn't it? 'Paola,' he said. He waited, repeated her name, and waited a longer time.

The bells began to ring the hour: Brunetti took this as a sign that he could wake her now. He turned, put his hand on her shoulder and shook it gently. 'Paola,' he said again.

There was the faintest tremor of movement.

‘Paola’ he repeated. 'Could your father arrange for me to meet Giuliano Marcolini?' The last bell chimed, and the world returned to silence.

‘Paola, could your father arrange for me to see Giuliano Marcolini?'

The bundle beside him turned away. He put his hand on her shoulder again, and the bundle moved even further.

‘Paola, could

'If you say that again, I'll drown the children’ "They're too big.'

There was some thrashing about, and then he saw the side of her face. One eye opened.

‘I’ll bring you coffee,' he said amiably and got out of bed. 'And then we'll talk.'

 

Though the promise was not easily won from her, Paola agreed to phone her father and ask him if he would arrange a meeting. Brunetti knew that he could, as a police officer, have arranged one himself, but he knew it would be more easily done, and he would be more gracefully received, were the request to come through the agency of Conte Orazio Falier.

Paola told him she would phone the Count that afternoon: her father was in South America, and she had to find out where exactly he was to be able to figure out the time difference before she called him.

Thus it was that Brunetti, thinking of his father-in-law, was momentarily confused when Vianello came into his office in mid-morning, saying, 'Pedrolli's on the list’

Brunetti looked across at the Inspector and asked,'What list?'

'The list on the computer. Dottor Franchi's. He's been a customer there for the last four years.'

'Of the pharmacy?'

‘Yes’

‘Pedrolli?'

'Yes.'

'And Franchi has seen his medical records?' It was only then that Brunetti noticed the file in Vianello's hand.

It's all in here,' Vianello said. He came and stood next to Brunetti and put the file on the desk. He opened it and shuffled through the stack of papers, pulling out four or five. Brunetti saw short paragraphs of very small print, numbers, dates. Glancing down the first page, he saw Latin terms, more dates, brief comments that made little sense to him.

Vianello spread the papers out on the desk so that they could look at all of them at the same time. 'This goes back only seven years,' Vianello said. 'That’s as far back as they could be traced.'

‘Why?'

Vianello raised a hand. 'Who knows? The original files were lost? They haven't got that far back in computerizing the records? You name it'

'Have you read it?' Brunetti asked.

The first two paragraphs,' the Inspector said, his eyes on the third.

Together, they read down the first sheet of paper, then the next, and then the rernaining pages. Pedrolli's visits to fertility specialists appeared to have begun three years before, the year after his marriage.

At the bottom of two of the pages were what looked to Brunetti to be lab reports: he saw lists of names and lists of numbers which made little sense to him. He did recognize the words 'cholesterol' and 'glucose', though he had no idea what the numbers beside them meant in terms of Pedrolli's health.

The last page was a report, apparently emailed to ULSS from a clinic in Verona and dated two years ago.

'Probable malformation of the sperm ducts due to trauma experienced in adolescence,' Brunetti read. 'Sperm production normal, present in testicles, but obstruction of tubes results in total sterility.'

'Poor devil, eh?' said Vianello.

Sexual behaviour is the ichor, the very life-blood, of gossip. Remove it, and there is relatively little left to chew over in the lives of other people, certainly very little of any interest, aside from their money or their work or their health. Some people might take an interest in those things, but none of them possesses the all-consuming fascination of sexual behaviour and its consequences. The story of Pedrolli's affair and the subsequent birth of his child - to make no mention of his wife's noble acceptance of that child - was the sort of thing that would make the rounds.

But here was proof that Pedrolli, regardless of gossip, could not have been the father of the' child and so must have acquired the baby in some other way. One had but to indicate the word 'sterility' to the police, and it would not be long before Pedrolli would be listed among those to be investigated for illegal possession of a child he clearly could not have fathered. Since his name was on the birth certificate along with the mother's, she could be easily located, and then it was only a matter of time before the forces of the state could be expected to arrive to save the child. A person who valued virtuous behaviour would almost be constrained to make such a thing known to the authorities, wouldn't he? Well, unless perhaps a certain sum were to change hands, perhaps at regular intervals?

Brunetti reassembled the sheaf of papers, careful to keep them in order. 'What else is in there?' he asked, pointing to the file.

'Pucetti and I have already come across HIV and drug rehabilitation, even a surgeon with a history of hepatitis B.'

'A gold mine, really,' Brunetti said.

'I'm afraid so,' Vianello answered.

'Have you gone through them all?'

'No, only about half. But I came up here as soon as I saw that Pedrolli was a client of his.'

'Good,' Brunetti said. 'How many of you are working on this?'

'Just me and Pucetti,' Vianello said.

'How do you know what you're finding?'

Brunetti asked, tapping the medical reports with the back of his fingers.

'He's at one of the computers. And when he doesn't know what something is, he checks the medical dictionary.'

'Where'd he get that?' Brunetti enquired.

'The whole thing's on a disc: her friend sent it when he sent us these lists. He thought it would make things easier for us.'

'Thoughtful fellow,' observed Brunetti.

'Yes,' Vianello answered without true conviction.

'Go back and see what else you can find, all right? I want to read through this again.'

Vianello moved away from the desk but stopped, looking less than fully persuaded.

'Go on,' Brunetti said, gesturing towards the door. 'I'll come down soon.'

He glanced through the papers but with no great interest: he had learned what he needed to know the first time he read them. He looked out the window, suddenly unable to remember, not only what time of day it was, but the season. He got up and went over to the window, opened it. The air was cool, the grass across the way tired and dusty and in need of the rain that seemed to be in the air. His watch showed that it was almost one. He picked up the papers and went downstairs, only to be told that Vianello and Pucetti had gone out for lunch. Paola would be out, so Brunetti was not planning to eat at home. He tried not to feel sorry for himself that his colleagues had not asked him to join them and returned to his office. He dialled the number at the hospital of Ettore Rizzardi, the medico legale of the city, planning to leave a message, and was surprised when the doctor answered the phone.

'It’s me, Ettore’

'Hmm?'

'And good afternoon to you, too, Dottor Rizzardi’ Brunetti said in a voice he made sound as mindlessly cheerful as he could.

'What is it, Guido?' the doctor asked. 'I'm in the middle of something.'

'Malformation of the sperm ducts due to a trauma in adolescence?' Brunetti asked.

'No kids.'

'One hundred per cent?' 'Probably. Next question?' 'Fixable?'

'Perhaps. Any more questions?'

'Personal, not medical,' Brunetti answered. 'About Pedrolli, the paediatrician.'

‘I know who he is,' Rizzardi said with some asperity. Tost his son.'

'What did you hear about how he got his son?'

'Story I was told said he brought him back from some woman in Cosenza.'

'What, exactly, did you hear?'

‘I told you I was busy with something,' Rizzardi said with exaggerated patience.

'In a minute. Tell me what you heard.'

'About Pedrolli?'

‘Yes.'

'That he went to a medical conference in Cosenza, and while he was there he met a woman - one of those things that happen - and then he found out some time later that she was pregnant. And he did the right thing by her and accepted paternity’

'How did you find out about this, Ettore?'

There was a long pause before Rizzardi said, ‘I suppose the story just started to spread round at the hospital’

'Who started it?'

'Guido,' Rizzardi said with exaggerated politeness, 'It was more than a year ago. I don't remember’

'Then how did Pedrolli find out?' Brunetti asked. 'Do you know that?' 'Find out what?'

'That she was pregnant? The woman who was questioned couldn't even remember his name, so how did she find him? He certainly didn't leave her his business card, did he? So how did she find him or how did he find out she was pregnant?' Brunetti insisted, his curiosity running away with him.

‘I can't answer any of those questions, Guido,' Rizzardi said, impatience slipping back into his voice.

'Could you ask around?'

'I'd rather not,' Rizzardi surprised him by saying. 'He's a colleague’ Then, as if to make up for that, the doctor suggested, 'Why don't you come and ask him yourself?'

'Is he there?'

‘I saw him in the bar this morning, and he was wearing his lab coat, so it would seem so’

Rizzardi said. Brunetti heard another voice in the background, sounding insistent or angry. Rizzardi said, I've got to go,' and hung up.

Brunetti was on the point of deciding that he would call Vianello on his telefonino and join his colleagues for lunch, but just at that moment, his own telefimino rang.

'Pronto’ he said and saw that it was Paola's office number. 'Did you manage to track down your father?'

'No, he found me. He said he couldn't sleep because of the time difference, so he called to see how we are. He's in La Paz.'

Ordinarily, the name of the city would have caused Brunetti to joke and ask if her father were there to arrange a deal in cocaine, but the mounting evidence that many, if not most, of the calls made on telefimini were intercepted and recorded dissuaded him from doing so. Instead, Brunetti contented himself with a neutral, 'Ah.'

'And hell see you at three.'

'Marcolini?'

'Certainly not my father,' she said and hung up.

That left Brunetti just under two hours. If he was able to speak to Pedrolli now, he might be better prepared to meet the doctor's father-in-law. Perhaps from Pedrolli he could get some sense of whether a man as powerful as Marcolini would use his connections to find a way to return the child to Pedrolli and his wife. Since the child's natural mother seemed to want no part of him, perhaps the authorities would ... Brunetti stopped himself from pursuing this thought. He could not stop himself, however, from remembering how Pedrolli had cradled his missing son in his empty arms, and it made him a victim of his own sentimentality.

He wrote a note to Vianello, saying he was going to the hospital to speak to Pedrolli and then to Marcolini; he left it downstairs on the Inspector's desk. It had begun to rain, so Brunetti ducked back inside to take an umbrella from the stand where the staff always deposited those umbrellas left behind by visitors.

Brunetti was glad of the rain, however inconvenient it proved to him or anyone else. The autumn had been a dry one, as had the summer, and Chiara had redoubled her efforts as water monitor of the family. Infected by her constant reminders about the waste of water, Brunetti now found himself asking barmen to turn off taps left running to no purpose, a request which always earned him astonished glances both from staff and from other customers. What surprised him was the frequency with which he found himself having to do it.

When he reached the hospital, all thought of lunch abandoned, he followed the signs to pediatria. He heard it before he saw it, in the wail of a screaming baby that flooded down the staircase and grew louder as he approached.

The waiting room was empty, but the sound penetrated even the heavy double doors separating him from the ward. Brunetti. pushed one of them open and went into the corridor. A nurse emerging from one of the rooms came immediately towards him. 'Visiting hours have finished’ she said above the screams.

Brunetti took his warrant card from his pocket, showed it to her, and said, 'I'd like to speak to Dottor Pedrolli’

'He's with a patient’ she said sharply, then added, 'Haven't you people done enough to him?'

'When will he be free?' asked an imperturbable Brunetti. 'I don't know.' 'Is he here?' Brunetti asked. 'Yes, in 216’

'‘I’ll wait, then, shall I?'Brunetti asked.

At a loss what to do, she turned and walked away, leaving Brunetti standing by the door. It was then he noticed that the cries of the child had ceased and felt a slackening of the tension in his heart.

After some time, a bearded man in a white jacket emerged from a room halfway down the corridor and started in Brunetti's direction. Had he seen him on the street, Brunetti would not have recognized Pedrolli. The doctor was taller than he had seemed lying on the hospital bed, and the bruise on his face had all but disappeared.

'Dottor Pedrolli?' Brunetti asked as the man grew closer.

Startled, the doctor looked up. 'Yes?'

'I'm Commissario Guido Brunetti’ he said,

extending his hand. ‘I came to visit you when you were in hospital’ Then, smiling, Brunetti added, 'As a patient, I mean’

Pedrolli took the extended hand. 'Yes, I remember your face, but I'm afraid I don't remember much else. That was when I still couldn't talk, I think. I'm sorry’ His smile was awkward, almost embarrassed. His voice, which Brunetti was hearing for the first time, was deep and resonant, a true baritone.

'Could I speak to you for a moment, Dottore?' Brunetti asked.

Pedrolli's gaze was level, untroubled, almost uninterested. 'Of course,' he said. Pedrolli led Brunetti into the corridor and then down to one of the last doors on the left. Inside, Brunetti saw a desk with a computer, a few chairs ranged in front of it. The windows behind the desk looked out on the same horizontal tree Brunetti had noticed on his last visit. One wall was covered with bookshelves filled with medical texts and journals.

'Here's as good as any place,' Pedrolli said, pulling a chair out for Brunetti. He took the other chair and sat facing him. 'What is it you'd like to know?' Pedrolli asked.

'Your name has come to our attention, Dottore,' Brunetti began.

Almost unconsciously, Pedrolli reached up and touched the side of his head. 'Is that meant to be an understatement?' he asked with an expression he seemed to be struggling to make appear pleasant.

Brunetti smiled in return but continued, 'This isn't connected in any way to why I saw you last time, Dottore.'

The look Pedrolli gave Brunetti was sharp, but then he quickly looked away.

'That investigation was in the hands - and remains in the hands - of the Carabinieri. I'm here to ask you about another investigation that is being carried out by my department.'

'The police, then?'

'Yes, Dottore.'

'What sort of investigation is that, Commissario?' he asked with a more than faintly ironic emphasis.

'Your name has appeared in connection with an entirely unrelated matter. I've come to ask you about that'

^‘I see,' Pedrolli said. ‘Perhaps you could be more specific?'

'It has to do with fraud here at the hospital,' Brunetti said, deciding to raise this first, before introducing the idea that he might be the victim of blackmail. Pedrolli relaxed just minimally.

'Fraud of what sort?'

'False appointments.' He saw the contraction of Pedrolli's eyes and went on, 'There are doctors here who are apparently scheduling appointments for patients they know will not keep those appointments; in some cases pharmacists schedule the appointments, and then the health service is charged for them, though they never take place. In at least three cases.