could have, by the time our papers were processed and we were approved, the only children we could have would be ... well, would be older. But we wanted’ she said, and Brunetti prepared himself to hear what she would say,

.. a baby’ She spoke calmly, as though entirely unconscious of the pathos of what she had said, and Brunetti found an even greater pathos in that.

He still did not look at her; he permitted himself to nod in acknowledgement, but still he said nothing.

'My sister isn't married, but Gustavo's sister has three children,' she said. 'And his brother has two.' She glanced at him as if to register his response to this evidence of their failure, and went on. 'Then someone here at the hospital -I think it was one of his colleagues, or one of his patients - well, someone told Gustavo about a private clinic’ He waited for her to continue, and she added. 'We went and we had tests, and there were ... there were problems.' The fact that Brunetti knew about the nature of the visit embarrassed him as much as if he had been caught reading someone else's mail.

Idly, she rubbed the toe of her shoe against a long scratch in the floor tiles that had been left by a cart or some heavy object. Still looking down, she added, 'We both had problems. If it had been just one of us, it might have been possible. But with both of us.. ‘ Brunetti let the pause stretch out until she added, 'He saw the results. He didn't want to tell me, but I made him.'

Brunetti's profession had made him a master of pauses: he could distinguish them the way a concert-master could distinguish the tones of the various strings. There was the absolute, almost belligerent pause, after which nothing would come unless in response to questions or threats. There was the attentive pause, after which the speaker measured the effect on the listener of what had just been said. And there was the exhausted pause, after which the speaker needed to be left undisturbed until emotional control returned.

Judging that he was listening to the third, Brunetti remained silent, certain that she would eventually continue. A sound came down the corridor: a moan or the cry of a sleeping person. When it stopped, the silence seemed to expand to fill its place.

Brunetti glanced at her then and nodded, a gesture that could be read as agreement or as encouragement to continue. She apparently took it as both and went on, 'After we had the results, we had no choice but to resign ourselves. To not having a baby. But then Gustavo - it must have been a few months after we went to the clinic - he said that he was examining the possibility of private adoption.'

It sounded to Brunetti as if she were repeating a statement she had prepared in advance. ‘I see, he said neutrally. 'What sort of possibility?'

She shook her head and said, her voice barely above a whisper, 'He didn't say.'

Though Brunetti doubted this, he gave no indication and merely asked, 'Did he mention the clinic?'

She gave him a puzzled glance, and Brunetti explained. The clinic where you had the tests.'

She shook her head. 'No, he never mentioned the clinic, only that there was a possibility that we could have a baby.'

'Signora,' Brunetti said, 'I can't force you to tell me these things.' In a certain sense this was true, but sooner or later someone would have the authority to force her to do so.

She must have realized this, for she continued, 'He didn't say from where, said he didn't want me to get my hopes up, but that it was something he thought he could arrange. I assumed it was because of his work or because of people he knew.' She looked through the window, then at Brunetti. 'If I have to tell the truth, I suppose I didn't want to know. He said that everything would be in regola and that it would be legal. He said he had to claim that the child was his, but it wouldn't be: he told me that.'

Had he been questioning a suspect, Brunetti would have asked, voice pumped full of scepticism, 'And you believed him?' Instead, in the voice of concerned friendship, he asked, 'But he didn't tell you how this would happen, Signora?' He allowed three beats to pass and added, 'Or did you think to ask him?'

She shook the question away. 'No. I think I didn't want to know. I just wanted it to happen. I wanted a baby.'

Brunetti gave her a moment to recover from what she had said, then asked, 'Did he tell you anything about the woman?'

'Woman?' she asked, genuinely confused.

'Whose baby it was.'

She hesitated but then tightened her lips. 'No. Nothing.' Brunetti had the strange sensation that she had aged during this conversation, that the lines formerly confined to her neck had migrated up to the sides of her mouth and eyes.

'I see,' Brunetti said. 'And you never learned any more?' Surely, thought Brunetti, the man must have told her something; she must have wanted to know.

He saw that her eyes in fact were light grey and not green. 'No,' she said, lowering her head. 'I never discussed it with Gustavo: I didn't want to. He thought - Gustavo, that is - well, I suppose he thought it would upset me to know. He told me he wanted me to think from the very beginning that the baby was ours, and...' She stopped herself, and Brunetti had the feeling that she had forced herself not to add some vital final phrase.

'Of course,' Brunetti muttered when he realized she was not going to end the sentence. He had no idea how much more he could induce her to tell him, and he did not want to continue to question her if, by displaying curiosity rather than concern, he weakened the confidence she appeared to have developed in him.

Sandra opened the door to the room down the corridor and gestured to Signora Marcolini.

'Your husband's very agitated, Signora. Perhaps you could come and speak to him.' Her concern was evident, and Pedrolli's wife responded to it instantly by joining her at the door, then closing it after them.

Assuming that she would be some time in the room with her husband, Brunetti decided to try to find Dottor Damasco and ask if there had been any change in Pedrolli's condition. He knew the way to neurologia, and when he got there he started down the corridor toward where he knew the doctors had their offices.

He found the door, but when he knocked, a male nurse who was passing told him that the doctor was just finishing his rounds and usually came back to his office after that. When he added that this should be within the next ten minutes or so, Brunetti said he would wait. When the nurse was gone, he sat in one of the now-familiar, and familiarly uncomfortable, orange chairs. Without anything to read, Brunetti leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, the better to consider what he might ask Dottor Damasco.

'Signore? Signore?' was the next thing he heard. He opened his eyes and saw the male nurse. 'Are you all right, Signore?' the young man asked.

'Yes, yes,' Brunetti said, pushing himself to his feet. It all came back, and he asked, 'Is the doctor free now?'

The nurse gave a nervous smile. 'I'm sorry, Signore, but he's gone. He went home as soon as he finished his rounds. I didn't know he'd gone, and when someone mentioned it, I came down here to tell you. I'm sorry,' he repeated, sounding as if he were responsible for Dottor Damasco's disappearance.

Brunetti looked at his watch and saw that more than half an hour had passed. 'It's all right,' he said, suddenly aware of just how tired he was. He wished that, like Dottor Damasco, he could just finish his rounds and go home.

Instead, making a pretence of being fully awake, he thanked the young man and started back towards the reception desk. Passing the nurses' station, he approached the glass doors that led to the ward. He was stunned to see, halfway down the corridor, a few paces from the closed door of Pedrolli's room, the unmistakable back of his superior, Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta. Brunetti recognized the broad shoulders in the cashmere overcoat and the thick head of silver hair. What he did not recognize was the attentive, posture of the Vice-Questore, who was leaning towards a man, all of whom save an outline was blocked from view by Patta's body. Patta raised his right hand and patted at the air between them in a conciliatory manner, then lowered if to his side and moved back a step as if to allow more room for the man's response.

Beta dog deferring to alpha dog, was Brunetti's instant thought, and he retreated until he was partly hidden behind the chest-high counter of the nurses' station. Should Patta start to turn towards him, he would have time to back away and out of sight while he decided if he wanted his superior to discover him; he could take a few steps down the corridor, turn, then give vent to the very real surprise he felt at seeing his superior here at this hour.

The other man, most of his considerable bulk still obscured by Patta's body, raised both hands in what could be exasperation or surprise, then jabbed an angry finger repeatedly towards the closed door of Pedrolli's room. In response, Patta's head shook from side to side, then nodded up and down, much in the manner of a toy dog in the back of a car that had just hit a rough patch.

Suddenly the other man wheeled away from Patta and started down the corridor away from him. All Brunetti saw before he ducked behind the counter was the man's back: neck almost as thick as his head, short buzz-cut white hair, a body almost as wide as it was tall. When Brunetti looked again, he saw that Patta had made no motion to follow the man. As Brunetti watched, the man reached the doors at the end of the corridor and shoved them open, slamming the right one back against the wall with a crack that reverberated down the corridor.

Brunetti's impulse was to approach Patta and feign surprise, but good sense propelled him backwards, down a corridor, then through another set of doors. He waited there a full five minutes, and when he returned to neurologia, there was no sign of Patta.

9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brunetti went back to the corridor outside Pedrolli's room, waiting for Signora Marcolini to emerge so that he could slip back into his role of sympathetic listener. He reached into his jacket pocket for his telefbnino but discovered that he had left it at home. He did not want to miss Signora Marcolini when she emerged, but he did want to call Paola and tell her he would not be home for lunch and had no idea when he would be.

He sat in the plastic chair and stared into space, careful to keep his head forward and away from the temptation of the wall behind him. After less than a minute, he went to the end of the corridor and read the list of instructions for evacuation in case of fire, then the list of doctors working on the ward. Gina came through the door on the other side of the desk.

'Signora Gina, excuse me, but could I use the phone?'

She gave him a very small smile and said, 'Dial nine first.' He picked up the phone behind the nurses' desk and dialled his home number.

'Si?' he heard Paola answer.

'Still too tired to talk?' he couldn't resist asking.

'Of course not,' she answered. Then, 'Where are you?'

'At the hospital.' Trouble?'

'The Carabinieri over-reacted making an arrest, it seems, and the man is here. He's a doctor, so at least he's assured of good care.'

'The Carabinieri attacked a doctor?' she said, incapable of keeping the shock from her voice.

‘I didn't say they attacked him, Paola,' he said, though what she said was true enough. ‘I said they over-reacted.'

'And what does that mean, that they drove their boats too fast taking him to the hospital? Or made too much noise and disturbed the neighbours when they were kicking in his door?'

Though Brunetti tended to share Paola's scepticism about the overall competence of the Carabinieri, he did not, in his caffeine-and-sugar-induced state, want to have to listen to her voice it. 'It means he resisted arrest and broke the nose of one of the men who were sent to get him.'

She was on to him like a hawk. 'One of the men? How many were there?'

'Two’ Brunetti chose to lie, marvelling at how quickly he had been manoeuvred into defending the men who had assaulted Pedrolli.

'Armed men?' she asked.

Suddenly tired of this, Brunetti said, 'Paola, I'll tell you everything when I see you, all right?'

'Of course,' she answered. 'Do you know him?'

'No’ Having heard enough about the doctor to have formed a favourable opinion of him did not count as knowing him, Brunetti told himself.

'Why did they arrest him?' she asked.

'He adopted a baby a year and a half ago, and it seems now that he did it illegally’

'What happened to the baby?' Paola asked.

'They took him away,' Brunetti said in a neutral voice.

'Took him away?' Paola asked with all of her former belligerence. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

'He was taken into care.'

'Into care as in given back to his real mother, or into care as in put in an orphanage?'

'The latter, I'm afraid,' Brunetti admitted.

There was a long pause, after which Paola said, as if to herself, 'A year and a half,' and then she added, 'God, what heartless bastards they are, eh?'

Betray the state by agreeing with her or betray humanity by demurring: Brunetti considered the options open to him and gave the only response he could. 'Yes’

'We'll talk about it when you get home, all right?' said a suddenly accommodating Paola.

'Yes,' Brunetti said and replaced the phone.

Brunetti was relieved he had not told Paola about the other people, the ones who had been kept under surveillance for almost two years. Alvise - even Brunetti himself - had focused on that number, that year and a half that a knowing authority had allowed the new parents to keep the child. That's when a man becomes a father, Brunetti knew, or at least he remembered that it was during that first year and a half that his own children had been soldered into his heart. Had either of them been taken from him, for any reason, after that time, he would have gone through life with some essential part of himself irreparably damaged. Before that conviction could fully take shape in his mind, Brunetti realized that, had either child been taken from him at any time after he first saw them, his suffering would have been no different than if he had had them for eighteen months, or eighteen years..

Back in his chair, he resumed his consideration of the wall and of the strange fact of Patta's presence, and after another twenty minutes, Signora Marcolini let herself out into the hallway and walked over to him. She looked far more tired than when she had gone back into the room.

'You're still here?' she said. ‘I’m sorry, but I've forgotten your name’

'Brunetti, Signora. Guido,' he said as he got to his feet. He smiled again but did not extend his hand. ‘I’ve spoken to the nurses here, and it seems your husband is very well regarded. I'm sure he'll be well taken care of’

He expected a sharp response, and she did not disappoint. 'That could begin by keeping the Carabinieri away from him’

'Of course. I'll see what I can do about arranging that,' Brunetti said, though he wondered if this would be possible. Changing the subject, he asked, 'Can your husband understand what you say, Signora?'

'Yes’

'Good’ Brunetti's grasp of the workings of the brain was rudimentary, but it seemed to him that, if the man could understand language, then there might be some likelihood of his being able to regain speech. Was there some way that Pedrolli's powers could be tested? Without language, what were we?

'... away from the media,' he heard her say.

‘I beg your pardon, Signora. I didn't hear that: I was thinking about your husband.'

'Is there any way that all of this can be kept out of the media?' she repeated.

Presumably, she meant the accusations of false adoption that would be brought against them, but Brunetti's mind flashed to the Carabinieri's brutal tactics: surely it was in the best interests of the state that those be kept from the press. But in the event that the arrests became public knowledge -and the memory of that morning's television news interrupted to tell him that they already had - then it was in the best interests of the Pedrollis that their treatment at the hands of the Carabinieri became so, too.

'If I were in your place, Signora, I'd wait to see how they choose to present this.'

'What do you mean?' she asked.

'You and your husband have erred out of love, it seems to me’ Brunetti began, aware that he was coaching a witness, even aiding a suspect. But so long as he confined himself to discussing the behaviour of the media, he saw nothing improper in anything he might say or any warning he might offer. 'So they might decide to treat you sympathetically.'

'Not if the Carabinieri talk to them first’ she said, displaying a remarkable clear-sightedness about the ways of the world. 'All they’ve got to do is mention the wounded officer, and they'll be all over us’

'Perhaps not, Signora, once they learn about your husband's treatment - and yours, of course.'

At times, Brunetti worried about the growing ferocity of his contempt for the media. All a criminal had to do, it seemed to him at times, was present himself as a victim, and the howl would be heard in Rome. Plant a bomb, rob a bank, cut a throat: it hardly, mattered. Once the media decided that the accused had been subjected to ill-treatment or injustice, of any sort and however long ago, then he or she was destined to become the subject of long articles, editorials, even interviews. And here he was, all but coaching a suspect to present herself in just this way.

Brunetti hauled himself from these ideas and returned his attention to Signora Marcolini.

.. back to my husband,' he heard her say.

'Of course. Would it be possible for me to speak to you again, Signora?' he asked, knowing that he had the authority to take her down to the Questura and keep her there for hours, should he choose to.

'I want to see a lawyer first,' she said, raising herself in Brunetti's estimation. Knowing the name of the family that was likely to surround and protect her, Brunetti had no doubt that her legal representation would be the best available.

Brunetti considered asking her about the man who had so clearly dominated Patta in the brief scene outside her husband's room, but thought it might be better to keep his knowledge of that to himself. 'Of course, Signora,' he said, taking one of his cards from his wallet and giving it to her. 'If there's any way in which I can help you, please call me.'

She took the card, slipped it into the pocket of her skirt without looking at it, and nodded before re-entering her husband's room.

Brunetti walked away from the ward and then from the hospital, heading back toward the Questura, musing on his last exchange with Signora Marcolini. Her concern for her husband seemed genuine, he told himself. His thoughts turned to Solomon and the story of the two women who claimed to be the mother of the same baby. The real mother, for love of her son, renounced all claim to him when faced with Solomon's decision to cut the baby in half so that each claimant could have a part, while the false claimant made no objection. The story had of course been told endlessly and had thus become one of the set pieces that had entered into the common memory.

Why, then, had Signora Marcolini displayed no curiosity about the fate of the baby?

10

 

 

As soon as Brunetti got back to the Questura, he decided to stop and see if Patta had returned, but when he went upstairs, he was surprised to find Signorina Elettra at work behind her desk. She looked, at first glance, like a rainforest scene: her silk shirt was wildly patterned with leaves and violently coloured birds; a pair of tiny monkey legs peeked out from under her collar. Her scarf was the red of a baboon's buttocks, contributing to the tropical effect.

'But it’s Tuesday,' Brunetti said when he saw her.

She smiled and raised her hands in a gesture acknowledging human weakness. I know, I know, but the Vice-Questore called me at home

and said he was in the hospital. I offered to come in because he didn't know how long he'd be.'

Then, in a voice in which Brunetti detected real concern, she asked, 'There's nothing wrong with him, is" there?'

Brunetti smiled. 'Ah, Signorina, you ask me a question that my sense of good taste and fair play prevent me from answering.'

'Of course,' she said, smiling herself. ‘I fear I must use that lovely expression that American politicians use when they're caught lying: "I misspoke.'" Though her pronunciation was excellent, the word sounded dreadful to Brunetti. ‘I meant to ask why he was in the hospital when he phoned me.'

‘I saw him there about an hour ago,' Brunetti supplied. 'He was outside the room of a man -a paediatrician named Pedrolli - who was hurt during a Carabinieri raid on his home.'

'Why would the Carabinieri want to arrest a paediatrician?' she asked, and he watched as various possibilities played across her face.

It would seem that he and his wife adopted a baby boy illegally. About a year and a half ago,' Brunetti explained and went on, 'The Carabinieri raided homes in a number of cities last night: one of them was his. They must have been informed about the baby.' As he said this, Brunetti realized that it was an inference drawn from what Marvilli

who had been singularly evasive on the subject

had said rather than a piece of information the Captain had given him.

'What happened to the baby?' she demanded.

I'm afraid they took him’

'What? Who took him?'

'The Carabinieri’ Brunetti answered. 'At least that's what the one I spoke to told me’

'Why would they do that?' Her voice had risen, demanding a response from Brunetti, as if he were responsible for the fate of the child. When Brunetti failed to answer, she insisted, 'Took him where?'

'To an orphanage,' was the only answer Brunetti could give. 'I suppose it's where they place a child until the real parents are found or the court decides what will happen to him’

'No, I'm not talking about that. How could they take away a child after more than a year?'

Brunetti again found himself attempting to justify what he thought unjustifiable. 'The doctor and his wife came by the child illegally, it seems. She as much as admitted that to me when I spoke to her. The Carabinieri are interested in finding the person who organized it - the sale, whatever it was. The captain I spoke to said they're looking for a middle man who's involved in some of the cases.' He did not tell her that Marvilli had not in fact mentioned this middle man in connection with the Pedrollis.

Signorina Elettra put her elbows on her desk and lowered her head into her outspread palms, effectively hiding her face. 'I've heard people tell Carabinieri jokes all my life, but it would never occur to me that they could be this stupid,' she said.

They're not stupid’ Brunetti asserted quickly but with little conviction.

She opened her hands and looked at him. Then they're heartless, and that's worse.' She took a deep breath and Brunetti thought that she was summoning up a more professional manner. After a moment, she asked, 'So what do we do?'

'Pedrolli and his wife apparently went to a clinic -I assume it's a private clinic - in Verona. A fertility clinic, or at least one that works with problems of fertility. I'd like you to see if you can find one in Verona that specializes in fertility problems. Two of the other couples who adopted illegally were patients there.'

She said, calmer now that she had a task to focus on, 'I suppose it shouldn't be difficult to find. After all, how many fertility clinics can there be in Verona?' He left her to it and went upstairs.

It was more than an hour later when she came to his office. He saw that she wore a green skirt that fell to mid-calf. Below it were a pair of boots that put Marvilli's to shame.

'Yes, Signorina?' he asked when he had finished examining the boots.

'Who would have believed it, sir?' she asked, apparently having forgiven him for his attempt to defend the Carabinieri.

'Believed what?'

That there are three fertility clinics, or private clinics with specialist departments for fertility problems, in or near Verona?'

'And the public hospital?'

‘I checked. They handle them through the obstetrical unit’

'So that makes four’ Brunetti observed. 'In Verona.'

'Extraordinary, isn't it?'

He nodded. A broad reader, Brunetti had been aware for years of the sharp decline in sperm counts among European men, and he had also followed with distress the publicity campaign that had helped defeat a referendum that would have aided fertility research. The positions many politicians had taken - former Fascists in favour of artificial msemination; former Communists following the lead of the Church - had left Brunetti battered both in spirit and in mind.

If you're sure they went to a clinic there, then all I'll have to do is find their medical service numbers: they'd have to give them, even for a private clinic’

When Signorina Elettra had first arrived at the Questura, such a statement would have impelled Brunetti into an impromptu lecture on a citizen's right to privacy, in this case the sacred privacy that must exist between a doctor and his patient, followed by a few words about the inviolability of access to a person's medical history. 'Yes,' he answered simply.

He saw that she wanted to add something and raised his chin questioningly.

'It would probably be easier to check their phone records and see what numbers they called in Verona,' she suggested. Brunetti no longer enquired as to how she would go about obtaining those.

He watched as she wrote down Pedrolli's name, then she looked at him and asked, 'Does his wife use his name or her own?'

'Her own. It’s Marcolini: first name Bianca.'

She glanced at him and made a small noise of either affirmation or surprise. 'Marcolini’ she repeated softly and then, 'I'll see what I can find out’ and left.

After she was gone, Brunetti thought about who might be able to provide him with the names of the other people the Carabinieri had arrested. Quicker, perhaps, to try the existing bureaucratic channels and simply ask the Carabinieri themselves.

He started by calling the central command at Riva degli Schiavoni and asking for Marvilli, only to learn that the Captain was out on duty and not available by telephone. Forty minutes later, Brunetti had spoken to Marvilli's commander as well as to those in Verona and Brescia, but each of them said he was not at liberty to divulge the names of the people who had been arrested. Even when Brunetti claimed that he was calling at the order of his superior, the Questore of Venice, no information was forthcoming. When he requested that the guard be removed from in front of Dottor Pedrolli's room, Brunetti was told that his request had been recorded.

Changing tactics, Brunetti dialled the office number of Elio Pelusso, a friend who worked as a journalist for Il Gazzettino. Within a few minutes, he had the names, professions, ages, and addresses of the people who had been arrested, as well as the name of the clinic in Verona where many of those arrested had sought treatment.

He took this information down to Signorina Elettra and repeated what Signora Marcolini had told him about their attempts to have a child. She nodded as she wrote this down, then said, 'There's a book about this, you know.'

'Excuse me?'

'A novel, by an English writer, I forget who. About when there are no more babies and what people will do to get them.'

'A rather anti-Malthusian idea, isn't it?' Brunetti asked.

'Yes. It's almost as if we're living in two worlds,' she said. 'There's the world where people have too many children, and they get sick and starve and die, and our world, where people want to have them and can't'

'And will do anything to get them?' he asked.

She tapped a finger on the papers in front of her and said, 'So it seems.'

Back in his office, Brunetti called his home number. When Paola answered with the laconic si that suggested he had taken her away from a particularly riveting passage of whatever it was she was reading, Brunetti said, 'Can I hire you as an Internet researcher?'

'That depends on the subject'

Treatments for infertility.'

There was a long pause, after which she said, 'Because of this case?' ‘Yes’

'Why me?'

'Because you know how to do research’

After an overly loud sigh, Paola said, ‘I could easily teach you how, you know’

'You've been telling me that for years,' Brunetti replied.

'As have Signorina Elettra and Vianello, and your own children.'

'Yes’

'Does it make any difference?' 'No, not really’

There unfolded yet another long silence, after which Paola said, 'AH right. I'll give you two hours of my time and print out whatever seems interesting’

'Thank you, Paola’

'What do I get in return?'

‘Undying devotion’

‘I thought I had that already.'

'Undying devotion and ‘I’ll bring you coffee in bed for a week’

'You were called out of bed at two this morning,' she reminded him.

‘I’ll think of something,' he said, conscious of how lame that sounded.

'You better,' she said. 'All right, two hours, but I can't begin until tomorrow’

'Why?'

‘I have to finish this book.' 'What book?'

'The Ambassadors’ she answered. Haven't you read it already?' ‘Yes. Four times.'

A man less familiar with the ways of scholars, the ways of marriage, and the ways of wisdom might have raised some objection here. Brunetti caved in, said, 'All right,' and hung up.

As he put the phone down, Brunetti realized he could have asked Vianello, or Pucetti, or, for all he knew, any one of the other officers downstairs. He had grown up reading printed pages, at school had learned from printed pages, and he still had the habit of belief in the printed page. The few times he had allowed someone to try to teach him how to use the Internet to search for information, he had found himself flooded with ads for all manner of rubbish and had even stumbled onto a pornographic website. Since then, on the few occasions when he had placed his trembling feelers on the web, he had quickly drawn them back in confusion and defeat. He felt incapable of understanding the links by which things were connected.

That thought reverberated in his mind. Links. Specifically, what was the link between the Questura of Venice and the Carabinieri command in Verona, and how had permission been obtained to raid Dottor PedrolH's home?

Had any of the other commissari given permission for such a thing, surely he would have heard, but there had been no mention of such an order, either before or after the raid. Brunetti considered for a moment the possibility that the Carabinieri had mounted the raid without informing the Venice police and that the magistrate who had authorized the raid had told them it was acceptable not to do so. But he considered this only to dismiss it instantly: there had been too many well-publicized shoot-outs between different police powers operating in ignorance of each other's plans, and few judges would now risk another such incident.

He was left, then, with an obvious possibility: incompetence. How easily it could have happened: an email sent to the wrong address; a fax read and then lost or misfiled; a phone message not written down and passed on. The explanation which most easily accounts for all the facts is usually the correct one. Though he would be among the last to deny that deceit and double-dealing played their part in the normal business of the Questura, he knew that simple incompetence was far more common. He marvelled at himself for finding this explanation so comforting.

 

 

11

 

Brunetti waited until almost two for Signorina Elettra to bring him whatever she had discovered about the people arrested the previous . night: when she did not appear, he went to her. From behind the door to Patta's office, he heard the VIce-Questore's voice: the long pauses meant he was talking on the phone. There was no sign of Signorina Elettra, so Brunetti assumed she had decided to make up for her lost morning's freedom and would return to the office when she chose to.

It was by then too late to go home for lunch, and most of the restaurants in the area would no longer be serving, so Brunetti went down to the officers' squad room, looking for Vianello, to see if he wanted to goto the bar at the bridge and have a panino. Neither the Inspector nor Pucetti was there, only Alvise, who gave Brunetti his usual affable smile.

'You seen Vianello, Alvise?' Brunetti asked.

Brunetti observed the officer process the question: with Alvise, the process of thinking always had a visible component. First he considered the question, then he considered the person who had asked it and the consequences of the answer he might give. His eyes shot around the room, perhaps to check if it were still as empty as when Brunetti had come in, perhaps to see if he had somehow overlooked Vianello lying under one of the desks. Seeing that no one was there to help him answer, Alvise finally said, 'No, sir.' His nervousness provided Brunetti with the key: Vianello was out of the Questura for his own purposes but had told Alvise where he was going.

The bait was too strong for Brunetti to resist. 'I'm going down to the corner for a panino. Would you like to join me?'

Alvise grabbed a stack of papers from his desk and showed them to Brunetti. 'No, sir, I've got to read through these. But thank you. If s as if I had accepted.' He turned his attention to the first page and Brunetti left the room, amused but at tike same time feeling obscurely cheapened by his teasing.

Vianello was in the bar, reading the paper at the counter, when Brunetti arrived. A half-full glass of white wine stood in front of him.

Food first, then talk. Brunetti pointed to a few of the tramezzini and asked Sergio for a glass of Pinot Grigio, then went over to stand beside Vianello. 'Anything?' he asked, gesturing towards the paper.

His eyes on the headlines, which blared news of the latest infighting among the various political parties as they attempted to butt one another aside in their frenzy to keep their trotters in the trough, Vianello said, 'You know, I always used to think it was all right to buy this, so long as I didn't read it. As though buying it was a venial sin and reading it a mortal.' He looked at Brunetti, then again at the headlines. 'But now I think I might have got it the wrong way round and it's a mortal sin to buy because it encourages them to keep on printing it. And reading it's only a venial sin because it really doesn't make any impression on you.' Vianello raised his glass and drank the rest of his wine.

'You'll have to talk to Sergio about that,' Brunetti said, nodding his thanks to the approaching barman for his plate of tramezzini and glass of wine, more interested in quelling his hunger than in listening to Vianello's vilification of the press.

'Talk to me about what?' Sergio asked.

'About how good the wine is’ Vianello said. 'So good I better have another.'

Vianello set the paper aside. Brunetti took one of the tramezzini and bit into it. 'Too much mayonnaise’ he said, then finished the sandwich and drank half a glass of wine.

'The wife tell you anything?' Vianello asked after Sergio brought his wine.

Usual stuff. She left everything about the adoption to her husband and didn't want to know that it was illegal.' Brunetti's words were neutral, his tone sceptical. "The other people who were arrested were couples. So I guess they didn't get this middle man.'

'Any chance the Carabinieri will tell us what comes out of their questioning?' Vianello asked.

'They wouldn't even tell me the names of the people they arrested,' Brunetti answered. I had to go to Pelusso for that.'

'They're usually more cooperative.'

Brunetti was not convinced of this. He had often encountered individual Carabinieri who were, but the overall organization had never struck him as willing to share its information, or its successes, with other police agencies.

'What did you make of Zorro?' Vianello asked.

'Zorro?' asked Brunetti absently, his attention focused on his second tramezzino.

'The guy with the cowboy boots.'

'Ah,' Brunetti said and finished his wine. He signalled to Sergio for another, and as he waited he weighed his opinion of the young officer. 'He's young to have reached captain, so it's unlikely he has much experience in leading this sort of raid. His men got out of control, so there's going to be trouble: that means he's worried about his career. The victim was a doctor, after all.'

'Yes, And his wife's a Marcolini,' added Vianello.

'Yes. His wife's a Marcolini.' In the Veneto that could count for considerably more than her husband's profession.

'But what about the Captain?' Vianello asked.

'He's young, as I said, so he could go either way’

'Meaning?'

'Meaning he could turn out to be a good officer: he was a bit high-handed with his own man, but he was there with him in the hospital and he made sure he got a few days off,' Brunetti said. 'Eventually he might stop wearing the boots’

'Or?'

'Or he could turn into a complete bastard and cause everyone a lot of trouble’ Sergio set down the second glass of wine; Brunetti thanked him and began his third tramezzino: tuna with egg. 'What about you?' Brunetti asked.

Without a moment's hesitation, Vianello answered, 'I think he might be all right’

'Why?'

'Because he helped Sergio lift up the grating and because he said please to the black guy’

Brunetti sipped at his wine and considered this. 'Yes, he did, didn't he?' To Brunetti, it seemed as good an indication of character as any he could come up with. 'Let's hope you're right-^‘

It was well past three when they returned to the Questura; the rest of the day brought nothing new. Signorina Elettra neither returned nor called to explain her absence, at least not to Brunetti; none of the Carabinieri commands he had contacted called to volunteer information. He tried the station at Riva degli Schiavoni and asked for Marvilli, but he was still not there: Brunetti did not leave his name, nor did he bother to renew his request that the guard in the hospital be removed.

He dialled the number of the neurology ward a little before five and asked to speak to Signora Sandra. She recognized his name and said that Dottor Pedrolli, so far as she knew, had still not spoken, though he seemed aware of what was going on around him. Yes, his wife was still in the room with him. Sandra said she had followed her instincts and kept the Carabinieri from talking to Dottor Pedrolli, though one was now sitting in the corridor, apparently to prevent anyone except doctors and nurses from entering the room.

Brunetti thanked her and replaced the phone. So much for cooperation between the forces of order. Pissing contest, turf war, escalation: call it whatever he wanted, Brunetti knew what was coming. But he preferred not to think about it until the following day.

 

Brunetti usually disliked eating the same thing for lunch and dinner, but the tuna steaks Paola had simmered in a sauce of capers, olives, and tomatoes could hardly be said to have originated on the same planet as the tuna tramezzini he had eaten for lunch. Tact and good sense prevented his making any reference to the latter, since comparison even with such paltry opposition might offend. He and his son Raffi snared the last piece of fish, and Brunetti spooned the remainder of the sauce on to his own second helping of rice.

'Dessert?' Chiara asked her mother, and Brunetti realized that he had managed to save space for something sweet.

'There's fig ice-cream,' Paola said, filling Brunetti with a flush of anticipation.

'Fig?' Raffi asked.

'From that place over by San Giacomo dell'Orio,' Paola explained.

'He's the one who does all the weird flavours, isn't he?' Brunetti asked.

'Yes. But the fig's sensational. He said these are the last of the season.'

Sensational it was, and after the four of them had managed to knock off an entire kilo, Brunetti and Paola repaired to the living room, each with a small glass of grappa, just what Brunetti's Uncle Ludovico had always prescribed to counteract the effects of a heavy meal.

When they were sitting side by side, watching the dim remnants of light they thought could still be seen in the west, Paola said, 'When the clocks go back, it'll be dark even before we eat. It's what I hate most about the winter, how dark it gets, how soon and for how long.'

'Good thing we don't live in Helsinki, then,' he said and took a sip of grappa.

Paola squirmed around until she found a more comfortable position and said, ‘I think you could name any city in the world, and I'd agree that it’s a good thing we don't live there.'

'Rome?' he offered, and she nodded. 'Paris?' and she nodded more forcefully. 'Los Angeles?' he ventured.

'Are you out of your mind?'

'Why this sudden devotion to patria?’ he asked.

'No, not to patria, not to the whole country, just to this part of it.'

'But why, all of a sudden?'

She finished her grappa and turned aside to set the glass on the table. 'Because I took a walk over towards San Basilio this morning. For no reason, not because I had to go anywhere or do anything, like a tourist, I suppose. It was still early, before nine, and there weren't a lot of people around. I stopped in a pasticceria, a place I've never been in before, and I had a brioche that was made of air and a cappuccino that tasted like heaven, and the barman talked about the weather with everyone who came in, and everyone spoke Veneziano, and it was like I was a kid again and this was just a sleepy little provincial town.'

'It still is’ Brunetti observed.

'I know, I know, but like it was before millions of people started coming here.'

'All in search of that brioche that's made of air and the cappuccino thaf s like heaven?'

'Exactly. And the inexpensive little trattoria where only the locals eat.'

Brunetti finished his grappa and rested his head against the back of the sofa, his glass cradled in his hands. 'Do you know Bianca Marcolini? She's married to the paediatrician, Gustavo Pedrolli.'

She glanced at him and said, 'I've heard the name. Works in a bank. Does social things, I think: you know, Lions Club and Save Venice and things like that.' She paused and Brunetti could almost hear the pages of her mind flipping over. 'If she's the one I think she is - that is, if it's the Marcolini family I think it is - then my father knows hers.'

'Personally or professionally?'

She smiled at this. 'Only professionally. Marcolini is not the sort of man my father would acknowledge socially.' She saw the expression with which Brunetti greeted this and added, 'I know what you think of my father's politics, Guido, but I can assure you that even he finds Marcolini's politics repellent.'

'For what specific reason?' Brunetti asked, though he was not surprised. Count Orazio Falier was a man as likely to despise politicians of the Right as those of the Left. Had a Centre existed in Italy, he would no doubt have found cause to despise them, as well.

'My father has been heard to call his ideas Fascistic'

'In public?' enquired Brunetti.

This caused Paola. to smile again. 'Have you ever known my father to make a political remark in public?'

‘I stand corrected,' Brunetti admitted, though he found it difficult to imagine a political position which someone like the Count would consider Fascistic.

'Have you finished The Ambassadors?' Brunetti asked, thinking this more polite than asking if she had had time to begin her research on infertility.

'No.'

'Good, then don't bother with the research I asked you to do.' 'On infertility?' ‘Yes.'

She was evidently relieved. 'But I would like you to keep your shell-like ears open for anything you might hear about Bianca Marcolini or her family.'

'Including the dreadful father and his even more dreadful politics?'

'Yes. Please.'

'Are the police going to pay me for this or is it supposed to be one of my duties as a citizen of the state?'

Brunetti pushed himself to his feet. The police will get you another grappa.'

 

12

 

 

Brunetti slept until almost nine, after which he dawdled in the kitchen to read the papers Paola had gone out and got before leaving for the university. All of the articles named the people arrested in the Carabinieri round-up: only Il  Corriere's account mentioned that the Carabinieri were still searching for the man believed to have organized the trafficking. None of the articles discussed the fate of the children, though La Repubblica did say that they varied in age from one to three years.

Brunetti paused after reading this: if simply hearing that a baby had been taken from his parents at eighteen months could incite someone as unimaginative as Alvise to rage, imagine what the reality would be for the parents of a three-year-old. Brunetti could not bring himself to think of the people who had adopted the children as anything other than their parents: not as illegal parents, not as adoptive parents: only as parents.

He went directly to his office and found some papers on his desk - routine things - staffing, promotions, new regulations concerning the registering of firearms. There was also, and more interestingly, a note from Vianello. The Inspector wrote that he had gone to meet someone to talk about lus doctors'. Not with, but about, which was enough to tell Brunetti that the Inspector was continuing with what had become his all-but-private investigation of the connection he suspected existed between three specialists at the Ospedale Civile and at least one local pharmacist, possibly more.

Vianello's interest had first been piqued some weeks before, when one of his informants - a man whose identity Vianello was unwilling to reveal - had suggested that the Inspector might be interested in the frequency with which certain pharmacists who were authorized to schedule specialist appointments referred their clients to these three doctors. Vianello had mentioned the suggestion to Signorina Elettra, who found it as intriguing as he did. Together they had turned it into a kind of school science project, competing with one another to discover just how these three doctors might have earned the attention of Vianello's source.

Illumination had been provided by Signorina

Elettra's sister Barbara, herself a doctor, who had explained to them a recent bureaucratic innovation which permitted pharmacists access to the central computer of the city health service so as to enable them to schedule specialist appointments for their patients when these visits were recommended by their regular doctors. The patient would thus be saved the time spent in hospital queues waiting to schedule an appointment, and the pharmacist would be paid a fee for performing the service.

Signorina Elettra had seen one possibility immediately, as had Vianello: all an enterprising pharmacist needed was a specialist, or more than one, willing to accept appointments for what were effectively phantom patients. And how much easier to create need for those appointments than for that same pharmacist to add a single line, recommending a specialist visit, to the bottom of an ordinary prescription? The health service, ULSS, was not known for the efficiency of its bookkeeping, so it was unlikely that the handwriting on these prescriptions would be examined closely: all that had to be in order were the patient's name and health service registration number. Patients almost never saw their own computer records, so there was little chance that they would learn that these phantom appointments had been made in their names: the health system would thus have no reason to question the doctor's charge for having seen the patient, nor the pharmacist's fee for having scheduled the appointment.

And whatever arrangement the pharmacist and doctor might come to between themselves would certainly remain private, though 25-75 would seem an equitable division. If a specialist visit cost between 150 and 200 Euros, happy the pharmacist who managed to schedule four or five a week, and happy the doctors who could increase their income without having to increase their workload.

Presumably, then, Vianello was that morning again somewhere in the city talking to the man who had first mentioned the arrangement to him or to one of the other people who kept him supplied with information the police might find useful. What Vianello gave in exchange for this information Brunetti had no idea and did not choose to ask, just as he hoped no one would ask how he managed to repay his own sources for the information they provided him.

Knowing he would learn more when Vianello returned, Brunetti dialled the number of neurologia and asked to speak to Signora Sandra.

'If s Commissarib Brunetti, Signora,' he said when she came to the phone.

'He's fine,' she offered, avoiding pleasantries to save them both time.

'Is he talking?' Brunetti asked.

'Not to me and not to anyone on the staff, at least not that I know about,' she said.

'To his wife?'

‘I don't know, Commissario. She went home, about half an hour ago, but she said she'd be back by lunchtime. Dottor Damasco came on to the ward about an hour ago and is in with him now’

If I were to come over there, could I speak to him?'

To whom? Dottor Damasco or Dottor Pedrolli?' 'Either. Both.'

Her voice softened to a whisper. 'The Cara-biniere is still outside his room. They don't let anyone in except his wife and the medical staff.'

'Then I suppose I'd like to speak to Dottor Damasco,' Brunetti said.

After a long pause, the nurse said, 'Come over now, and perhaps you could talk to them both.'

‘I beg your pardon.'

'Come to the desk. If I'm not there, wait for me. There'll be a stethoscope in the right-hand drawer’ She hung up.

Brunetti left without telling anyone where he was going, walked to the hospital, and went directly to the neurology ward. No one was behind the desk. Brunetti felt a moment's nervousness, looked down the corridor to be sure it was empty, then stepped behind the desk and opened the top drawer on the right. He slipped the stethoscope around his neck and returned to the other side of the desk. He took two sheets of paper from the wastepaper basket and attached them to a clipboard, then bent over the papers and began to read.

A moment later, Signora Sandra, today in black jeans and black tennis shoes, joined him. Another nurse Brunetti did not recognize came up behind them and Sandra said, addressing Brunetti, 'Ah, Dottore, I'm glad you could come. Dottor Damasco is waiting for you’ Then, to the other nurse, 'Maria Grazia, would you take Dottor Costantini down to 307, please? Dottor Damasco is waiting for him.'

He wondered if Sandra wanted to keep herself entirely out of her subterfuge, should there be trouble later, but then it occurred.to him that her protective manner towards Dottor Pedrolli might well already have made the guards suspicious of her.

Keeping one eye on the papers, copies of lab reports that made no sense to him at all, Brunetti followed the nurse towards the room. A uniformed Carabiniere sat outside. He looked at the nurse, then at Brunetti, as they approached.

'Dottor Costantini’ the nurse explained to the officer, indicating Brunetti. 'He's here for a consultation with Dottor Damasco.'

The guard nodded and went back to the magazine spread on his lap. The nurse opened the door, announced the arrival of Dottor Costantini, and allowed Brunetti to enter the room without joining him. She closed the door.

Damasco looked in his direction and nodded. 'Ah, yes, Sandra told me you wanted to see us.' He then looked at Pedrolli, whose eyes were on Brunetti, and said, 'Gustavo, this is the man I told you was here before.'

Pedrolli kept his attention on Brunetti.

'He's a policeman, Gustavo. I told you that’

Pedrolli raised his right hand and moved it back and forth above his chest, in the place where the stethoscope lay against Brunetti's. The Carabinieri have a guard outside. The only way he could get in here to talk to you was by pretending to be a doctor,' Damasco explained.

Pedrolli's face softened: his beard disguised the hollows in his cheeks, which Brunetti thought had deepened overnight. He lay flat on the bed, a blanket pulled to his waist; above it Brunetti saw a blue and white pyjama jacket. Pedrolli's hair had once been light brown but was now, like his beard, mixed with equal portions of grey. He had the light skin and eyes that often accompany fair hair. A black bruise ran down from behind his left ear and disappeared into his beard.

Brunetti remained silent, waiting to see if Pedrolli would, or could, say anything. As he set the chart on the table next to the doctor's bed, his arm brushed across the stethoscope, making him feel foolish in his impersonation.

A minute passed, and none of the men spoke. Finally Damasco said, making no attempt to disguise his displeasure, 'All right, Gustavo. If you insist, we'll continue to play guessing games.' To Brunetti he said, If he raises one finger, the answer is yes. Two means no.'

When Brunetti said nothing, Damasco prodded him, 'Go ahead, Commissario. It's time-consuming and probably unnecessary, but if this is the way Gustavo's decided to protect himself, then that's the way we'll play it.' Damasco reached out and grabbed one of Pedrolli's blanketed feet; he gave it an affectionate shake, as if to contradict the exasperation in his words.

When Brunetti still did not speak, Damasco said, 'I haven't asked him anything about what happened. Well, except if he remembers being hit, which he says he doesn't. As his doctor, that’s my only concern.'

'And as his friend?' Brunetti asked.

'As his friend,' he began and considered for a moment. 'As his friend I went along with Sandra's harebrained idea to have you come and talk to him.'

Pedrolli appeared to have followed their conversation; at least his eyes had shifted back and forth as the two men spoke. As Damasco finished, Pedrolli's gaze moved to Brunetti, waiting for him to respond.

'As your friend told you’ Brunetti said, speaking to the man in the bed, 'I'm a police officer. One of my staff called me early yesterday morning and said an assaulted man was in the hospital, and I came down here to see what had happened. My concern then was the same as it is now: an armed assault on a citizen of this city, not the reason for it and not your response to it. As far as I've learned, you acted as would any citizen who was attacked in his home: you attempted to defend your family and yourself.'

He paused and looked at Pedrolli. The doctor raised one finger.

I have no idea how the Carabinieri are going to proceed with this case nor how they will present the information, and I don't know what accusations may be brought against you, Dottore’ Brunetti said, deciding it was best to stay as close as possible to the truth. 'I do know that there is a long list of charges they believe they can bring against you’

Here, Pedrolli held up his right hand and fluttered it back and form in the air.

'The officer I spoke to mentioned corruption of a public official, falsification of state documents, resisting arrest, and the assault of a public official in the performance of his duties. That last is the officer you hit’

Again, the interrogatively raised hand.

'No, he wasn't hurt. His nose wasn't even broken. A lot of blood, but no real damage.'

Pedrolli closed his eyes in what could have been relief. Then he looked again at Brunetti and, with the fingers of his right hand, took his left hand and slid his wedding ring up and down his finger.

'Your wife is fine, Dottore’ Brunetti answered, wondering at Pedrolli's concern, for the woman had only recently left the room.

Pedrolli shook his head and repeated the gesture with the ring, then to make things clearer, pressed his wrists together as though they were tied. Or handcuffed.

Brunetti raised both hands as if to ward off the idea. 'No charges have been brought against her, Dottore. And the captain I spoke to said that there probably would not be’

At this, Pedrolli pointed the index finger of his right hand at his heart, and Brunetti said, 'Yes, only against you, Dottore.'

Pedrolli tipped his head to one side and shrugged the other shoulder, as if consigning himself to his fate.

For what it was worth, Brunetti added, economical with the truth, 'I'm in no way involved in that investigation, Dottore. It will be conducted by the Carabinieri, not by us.' He paused, then continued, 'It's a jurisdictional thing. Because they made the original arrest, the case belongs to them.' He waited for some sign that Pedrolli understood or believed this, then added, 'My concern is with you as an injured person, the victim of an assault, if not a crime.' Brunetti smiled and turned to Dottor Damasco. 'I don't want to tire your friend, Dottore.' Careful of his phrasing, he added, 'If things change, would you let me know?'

Before Damasco could answer, Pedrolli reached out and seized Brunetti's wrist. He tugged at it with some force, pulling him closer to the bed. His mouth moved, but no sound emerged. Seeing Brunetti's evident confusion, Pedrolli made a cradling gesture with both arms and rocked them back and forth over his chest.

'Alfredo?' Brunetti asked.

Pedrolli nodded.

Brunetti patted the back of Pedrolli's right hand, saying, 'He's fine, Dottore. Don't worry about him, please. He's fine.'

Pedrolli's eyes widened, and Brunetti saw the tears gather. He looked away, pretending

Damasco had said something, and when he looked back, Pedrolli's eyes were closed.

Damasco stepped forward, saying. ‘I’ll call you if anything happens, Commissario.'

Brunetti nodded his thanks, retrieved the clipboard, and left the room. The Carabiniere guard was still seated outside the door, but he barely glanced at Brunetti. At the nurses' desk, Brunetti saw no one, nor was there anyone in the corridor. He undipped the papers and tossed them back into the waste basket, then set the clipboard on the desk. He removed the stethoscope, put it back in the drawer, and left the ward.

 

13

 

 

Brunetti took his time returning to the Questura, his mind occupied by the things he had failed to ask and the lingering unknowns of the Pedrolli... he didn't even know what to call it: Case? Situation? Dilemma? Mess?

Without information about the other adoptions, and in the face of Pedrolli's continuing silence, Brunetti knew as little about the details of the acquisition of the doctor's baby as he did of the others. He had no idea if the mothers were Italian or where they had given birth to their babies, how or where they took physical possession of the babies, what the going rate was. This last phrase appalled him. There was also the bureaucratic issue: just how much paperwork was needed to give evidence of paternity? In an orange metal box that had once contained Christmas biscuits, he and Paola kept the children's birth certificates, inoculation and health records, certificates of baptism and first communion, and some school records. The box stood, if memory served, on the top shelf of the wardrobe in their room, while their passports were in a drawer in Paola's study. He had no memory of how they had managed to get passports for the children: surely they must have been asked to provide birth certificates, and those certificates must also have been necessary to enrol the kids in school.

All official information about Venetian births and deaths, as well as changes in official place of residence, is kept at the Ufficio Anagrafe. As Brunetti left the hospital he decided to pass by the office: no time better than the present to speak to someone there about the bureaucratic process that led to the creation of legal identity.

He followed a slow-moving snake of tourists across Ponte del Lovo, down past the theatre and around the corner, but when Brunetti arrived at the Ufficio Anagrafe, tucked into the warren of city offices on Calle Loredan, his plan was to be frustrated by the most banal of reasons: city employees were on strike that day to protest about delays in the signing of their contract, which had expired seventeen months before. Brunetti wondered if the police - city employees, after all - were allowed to strike, and deciding that they were, he went into Rosa Salva for a coffee and then over to Tarantola to see what new books had come in. Nothing caught his fancy: biographies of Mao, Stalin, and Lenin would surely lead him to despair. He had read an unpleasant review of a new translation of Pausanias and so left it unbought. Because he made it a rule never to leave a bookstore without buying something, he setded for a long out-of-print translation of the Marquis de Custine's 1839 travels in Russia, printed in Torino in 1977: Lettere dalla Russia. The period was closer to the present than ordinarily would have interested him, but it was the only book that appealed, and he was in a hurry, strike or not.

Brunetti was conscious of how very virtuous he felt in proceeding to the Questura to go back to work, now that he knew about the strike and the possibility it offered him of going home to start on the book. Instead, buoyed by pride in his self-restraint, he set the book on his desk and picked up the papers that had accumulated there. Try as he might to concentrate on lists and recommendations, Brunetti felt his attention drawn towards the unanswered questions surrounding Pedrolli. Why had Marvilli refused to divulge more information? Who had authorized the Carabinieri raid on the home of a Venetian citizen? What power had summoned the Vice-Questore to Pedrolli's hospital room not half a day after he arrived there? And how was it, anyway, that the Carabinieri had learned about Pedrolli's baby?

His reflections were interrupted by the ringing of his phone.

'Brunetti’

'Come down here now’ And then Patta's voice was gone.

As he stood, Brunetti's eye was caught by the copy on the back cover of the book he had just bought, '... the arbitrary imposition of power which characterized .. ‘

'Ah, M. le Marquis’ he said out loud, 'if you knew the half of it’

Downstairs, he found no sign of Signorina Elettra. He knocked and entered Patta's office without waiting to be told to do so. Patta was at his desk, the papers of the overworked public official spread before him; even his summer tan had begun to fade, contributing to the total effect of tireless dedication to the many obligations of office.

Before Brunetti moved towards Patta's desk, the Vice-Questore asked, 'What are you working on, Brunetti?'

'The baggage handlers at the airport, sir, and the Casino’ he answered, much as he might inform a dermatologist about the foot fungus he kept picking up at work.

'All that can wait’ Patta said, a sentiment in which Brunetti most heartily joined. Then, when Brunetti stood in front of him, Patta asked, 'You've heard about this mix-up with the Carabinieri, I assume?'

Mix-up, was it? 'Yes, sir’

'Good, then. Sit down, Brunetti. You make me nervous standing there.'

Brunetti did as he was told.

The Carabinieri over-reacted, and they'll be lucky if the man in the hospital doesn't bring charges against them.' Patta's remark raised Brunetti's estimation of the man who had stood with the Vice-Questore outside Pedrolli's door. After a moment's reflection, Patta tempered his opinion and said, 'But I doubt that he will. No one wants that sort of legal trouble’ Indeed. Brunetti was tempted to ask if the white-haired man at the hospital would be involved in whatever legal mess were to ensue, but good sense suggested that he keep his knowledge of Patta's meeting to himself and so he asked, 'What would you like me to do, sir?'

There seems to be some uncertainty about the nature of the communications that took place between the Carabinieri and us,' Patta began. He peered across at Brunetti, as if to enquire whether he were receiving the coded message and knew what to do with it.

'I see, sir’ Brunetti said. So the Carabinieri ^N could produce evidence that they had informed the police of the projected raid, but the police could find no evidence that they had received it. Brunetti's mind cast back to the rules of logic he had studied with such interest, decades ago now, at university. There had been something about the difficulty - or was it the impossibility? - of proving a negative. This meant that Patta was thrashing about, trying to decide which would be less risky: to blame the Carabinieri for their excessive use of force or to find someone at the Questura to take the rap for the failure to transmit the Carabinieri's message?

'In fight of what's happened to this doctor, I'd like you to keep an eye on things and see that he's treated decently. So that nothing more happens.'

Brunetti prevented himself from completing the Vice-Questore's sentence by adding,'... that would lead to trouble for me'.

'Of course, Vice-Questore. Would it be all right if I spoke to him, perhaps to his wife?'

'Yes,' Patta said. 'Do whatever you want. Just see that this doesn't get out of control and cause trouble’

'Of course, Vice-Questore,' Brunetti said.

Patta, with responsibility effectively transferred to someone else, directed his attention to the papers on his desk.

'I'll keep you informed, sir,' Brunetti said and got to his feet.

Clearly too busy with the cares of office to respond, Patta waved a hand at him, and Brunetti left.

Because Paola had agreed to help him by asking around about Bianca Marcolini, Brunetti steeled himself and went down to the computer in the officers' room, where he managed to surprise his colleagues by the ease with which he connected to the Internet and then typed in the letters for 'infertilita', having to go back to correct only two typing errors.

For the next hour, Brunetti was the centre of what became a team effort on the part of the uniformed branch to help the research along. Though none of the younger men actually pushed him aside, the occasional hand did slip in below his to type in a word or two; Brunetti, however, never quite relinquished possession of the keyboard or mouse. The fact that he insisted on printing out everything that was of interest to him gave him the sense, however spurious, that he was engaged in the same sort of research he used to conduct in the university library.

When he was finished and went to the printer to pick up the stack of papers that had accumulated, he was struck by two thoughts: it was all so fast, virtually instant, but he had no idea how true any of it was. What made one website more reliable than another, and what, in heaven's name, was 'II Centro per le Ricerche sull’Uomo'? Or 'Istituto della Demografia'? For all Brunetti knew, either the Catholic Church or the Hemlock Society could be behind all of the sources he had consulted.

He had long accepted that most of what he read in books and newspapers and magazines was only an approximation of the truth, always slanted to Left or Right. But at least he was aware of the prejudices of most journalists and had thus, over the decades, learned to read aggressively, and so he could almost always find some kernel of fact - he entertained no illusions of finding the truth - in what he read. But with the Internet, he was so ignorant of context that all of the sources carried equal weight with him. Brunetti was adrift in what could well be a sea of Internet lies and distortions and utterly without the compass he had learned to use in the more familiar sea of journalistic lies.

When he finally returned to his office and began to read what he had printed out, he was surprised at the consistency across the various websites. Though the numbers and percentages differed noinimally, there was no doubt as to the steep decline in birth rates in most Western countries, at least among the native populations. Immigrants had more children. He knew there was some politically correct manner in which this essential statistical truth was meant to be phrased: 'cultural variation', 'differing cultural expectations'. Phrase it as you chose: poor people had more children than rich people, just as poor people had always had more children than rich people. In the past, more of them had died, carried off by disease and poverty. But now, at home in the West, far more of them survived.

At the same time that the number of children born to immigrants was increasing all over Europe, their hosts were having difficulty even in reproducing themselves. European women were older now when they had their first child than they had been a generation ago. Fewer people bothered to get married. The cost of housing had risen dramatically, limiting the chance that young working people could easily set up a household of their own. And who today could afford to have a baby on only one salary?

All of those things, Brunetti knew, merely created options which people could choose to exercise, not physical impediments which could not be overcome. The steady decline in the number of viable sperm, however, was not a matter of choice. Pollution? Some genetic change? An undetected disease? Repeatedly, the websites made mention of a group of substances called phthalates, present in all manner of common products, including deodorants and food packaging: it would seem that there existed an inverse proportion between their presence in a man's blood and a lowered sperm count. Though the clear implication that these substances were responsible for a half-century of decreasing sperm counts was common, none of the articles dared to name them as a direct cause. Brunetti had always been of a mind that rising economic expectations must have exerted as strong an influence on the birth rate as falling sperm counts. After all, if there had been millions of sperm in the past, there were still half that number, and that should surely suffice.

One report stated that the sperm counts of immigrant men began to decline after they had lived in Europe for a few years, which would certainly lend credence to the theory that pollution or environmental contamination was the cause. Wasn't it the lead water pipes that were said to have contributed to the decline in health and fertility among the population of Imperial Rome? Not that it made any difference now, but at least the Romans had had no idea of that possible connection: it fell to later ages to discover the probable cause, and then do nothing to moderate their behaviour.

Historical reflection was cut short by the arrival of Vianello. As he came in, smiling broadly and holding up a few sheets of paper, the Inspector said, I used to hate white collar crime. But the more I learn, the more I like it’ He placed the papers on Brunetti's desk and took a seat.

Brunetti wondered if Vianello were planning a career move; not for a moment did he doubt the involvement of Signorina Elettra in whatever change had taken place in Vianello's assessment.

'"Like it"?' Brunetti asked, indicating the papers, as though they were the instruments of Vianello's conversion.

'Well,' Vianello tempered, aware of Brunetti's amusement, 'in the sense that you don't have to go chasing after them or lurk in the rain outside their doors for hours, waiting for them to come out, so that you can follow them’

At Brunetti's continued silence, the Inspector went on. 'I used to think it was boring, sitting around, reading through tax and financial declarations, checking credit card statements and bank records’

Brunetti stopped himself from observing that, since most of these activities were illegal unless performed with an order from a judge, it was perhaps better that a policeman, at the very least, find them boring.

'And now?' Brunetti enquired mildly.

Vianello shrugged and smiled at the same time. 'And now I seem to be developing a taste for it’ He needed no prompting from Brunetti to explain: 'I suppose it's the thrill of the chase. You get a scent of what they might be up to: figures that don't add up or that are too big or too small, and then you begin to hunt through other records or you find their names in some other place where you didn't expect to find them or where they shouldn't be. And then the numbers keep coming in and they get stranger and stranger, and then you see what it is they're up to arid how to keep an eye on them or trace them into other places’

Without his realizing it, Vianello's voice had grown louder, more impassioned. 'And you just sit there, at your desk, and soon you know everything they're doing because you've learned how to trace them, and so everything they do comes back to you.' Vianello paused and smiled. 'I suppose this is how a spider must feel. The flies don't know the web is there, can't see it or sense it, so they just buzz around and do whatever it is flies dp, and you just sit there, waiting for them to land.'

'And then you snap them up?' Brunetti asked.

‘You could put it that way, I suppose,' Vianello answered, looking equally pleased both with himself and with his extended metaphor.

'More specifically?' Brunetti asked, looking in the general direction of the papers. 'Your doctors and their accommodating pharmacists?'