the patients for whom the appointments were scheduled are dead’

Pedrolli nodded affirmatively, then pressed his lips together. ‘I’d be a liar if I said I'd never heard about this, Commissario. But it doesn't happen in this department. My primario and I see to that’

Though Brunetti's impulse was to believe the doctor, he still asked, 'How?'

'All patients - well, their parents, since our patients are all children - who have appointments scheduled have to sign in with the nurse on duty, and at the end of her shift, she checks that list against the computer list of the patients who were actually seen by every doctor in the department.' He saw Brunetti's response and said, 'I know, it's very simple. It adds about five minutes of work to the nurse's day, but it eliminates any possibility of falsification.'

‘It sounds as though you set up your system specifically to avoid the possibility, Dottore,' Brunetti said. 'If I might say that'

‘I think you should say that, Commissario: that's exactly why we did it.' Pedrolli waited a moment until Brunetti's gaze met his, and then said, 'Word travels in a hospital’

‘I see,' Brunetti said.

'Is that all you wanted to ask me about?' Pedrolli said, beginning to shift his weight forward on his chair.

'No, Dottore, it isn't. If you'd have a moment's patience.. ‘

Pedrolli relaxed back into his chair and said,

'Of course’ but he looked at his watch as he said it. Suddenly Pedrolli's stomach made a thunderous groan and he gave that same almost embarrassed smile. ‘I haven't had lunch yet.'

'I'll try not to keep you too long,' Brunetti said, hoping that his own stomach would not begin to echo the doctor's.

'Dottore,' Brunetti began, 'are you a customer at the pharmacy in Campo Sant'Angelo’

'Yes. It's the one nearest to where I live.'

'You've used it for years?'

'Since we moved there, about four years ago. No, a bit more than that’

'Do you know the pharmacist well?' Brunetti asked.

A long time passed before Pedrolli said, pronouncing his words carefully, 'Ah, the exquisitely moral Dottor Franchi.' Then he added, I suppose I know him as well as any doctor knows a pharmacist.'

'Could you tell me what you mean by that, Dottore?'

Pedrolli shrugged. 'Dottor Franchi and I have diverging views of human weakness, I fear,' he said with a wry smile. 'He tends to take a sterner view than I do’ He gave a small smile. When Brunetti said nothing, Pedrolli continued, 'As to how well I know him professionally, I ask. him if patients of mine are collecting their prescriptions, and occasionally I go in to write and sign prescriptions when I've told someone over the phone to take a certain medicine.'

'And for yourself, Dottore? Do you buy things there?'

'I suppose I do; toothpaste or things we need in the house. Occasionally I'll get things my wife asks me to buy for her.'

'Do you get your prescriptions made up there?'

Pedrolli considered this question for a long time and finally said, 'No, I don't. I get any medicine I need here at the hospital.'

Brunetti nodded.

Pedrolli smiled, but it was not the same smile as before. 'Would you tell me why you're asking these questions, Commissario?'

Ignoring the question, Brunetti asked, 'In all these years, you've never had to get a prescription made up there?'

Pedrolli gazed off into the middle distance. 'Maybe, once, not too long after we moved in. I had flu, and Bianca went out to get medicine for me. She came back with something, but I don't remember if I needed a prescription for it.'

Pedrolli gazed away, his eyes narrowed in an attempt to recall, and he seemed about to speak when Brunetti interrupted to ask, 'If it had required a prescription, would that information have to be put into your medical records, Dottore?'

Pedrolli gave him a long look, and then suddenly his face went blank, as though someone had turned him off. Life returned in the form of a quick glance that Brunetti could not read. 'My medical records?' he finally asked, but it was not a question, not the way he said it. 'Why do you ask about them, Commissario?'

Brunetti saw no reason not to tell him, so long as he did not mention blackmail. 'We're looking into the inappropriate use of medical information, Dottore.'

He waited to see how Pedrolli would respond to this hint, but all the doctor did was blink, shrug, and say, 'I'm not sure that means anything specific to me.' It seemed to Brunetti that, behind the calm expression the doctor appeared to have nailed to his face, he was busy considering what Brunetti had just said, perhaps considering the possibilities towards which it might lead.

Brunetti realized that he had so far failed to raise with Pedrolli the chance of his son's return. He began again but in an entirely different tone of voice. 'What I would really like to do is talk to you about your son.'

He thought he heard Pedrolli gasp. Certainly the noise he made was stronger than a sigh, though the doctor's face remained impassive.

'What about my son would you like to know?' Pedrolli asked in a voice he struggled to control.

'Reports I've received suggest that the boy's natural mother is unlikely to make a claim that he be returned to her.' If Pedrolli understood the real meaning of this, he gave no sign of it, so Brunetti continued, 'And so I wondered if you had thought of pursuing the case in the courts.'

'What case?'

'Of having him returned to you?'

'How did you think that might be achieved, Commissario?'

'Your father-in-law is certainly a man ... well, a man with many connections. Perhaps he could ...' Brunetti watched the other man's face, waiting to see some play of emotion, but there was none.

The doctor glanced at his watch and said, 'I don't mean to be impolite, Commissario, but these are matters which concern my family and me, and I would prefer not to discuss them with you.'

Brunetti got to his feet. ‘I wish you well, Dottore. If I can ever be of help to you, I'd like to offer it,' Brunetti said, extending his hand.

Pedrolli took it, briefly looked as if he was going to say something, but remained silent.

Brunetti said he knew the way out of the hospital and left, planning to stop and have something to eat before his next meeting, with the doctor's father-in-law.

 

21

 

 

Brunetti stopped in a trattoria at the foot of the second bridge between the hospital and Campo Santa Marina but, finding that there was no table free, contented himself with a glass of vino novello and a plate of cicchetti, standing at the bar to eat them. Conversation swirled around him, but he overheard none of it, still recalling Pedrolli's surprise when asked about his medical records, or had it been at the suggestion that inappropriate use might have been made of them?

The fondi di carciofi were delicious, and Brunetti asked for two more, then another polpetta and another glass of wine. When he was finished, he was still not satisfied, though he was no longer hungry. These pick-up meals that he was often forced to eat were one of the worst things about his job, along with the too-frequent early morning calls, such as the one that had begun this story for him. He paid and left, cut behind the Miracoli and down towards Campo Santa Marina.

Paola had not had to tell him where the office of Marcolini's party was: its location was etched into the minds and hearts of every Venetian, either by fame or by shame. Lega Doge was one of the separatist political parties that had sprung up in the North in recent years, their platform the usual primitive cocktail of fear, rancour, and resentment at the reality of social change in Italy. They disliked foreigners, the Left, and women with equal ferocity, though their contempt in no way lessened their need for all three: the first to work in their factories; the second to blame for the ills of the country; and the third to prove their masculinity by serving in their beds.

Giuliano Marcolini was the founder of Lega Doge - Brunetti blanched at the thought of referring to Marcolini as the 'ideologue' because of its suggestion that the party might be involved with ideas. He had managed in the course of twenty years to turn his small plumbing supply business into a chain of megastores: for all Brunetti knew, the workers who had refitted his own bathroom four years earlier had obtained their fixtures from a Marcolini outlet.

Some wealthy men bought soccer teams; others acquired new wives or had their current ones rebuilt; some endowed hospitals or art galleries: it was Brunetti's destiny to live in a country where they began political parties. In obvious imitation of other separatist parties, Lega Doge had chosen a flag displaying a rampant animal; with the lion, however, having already given its allegiance to another party, the griffin, though it had appeared seldom in Venetian history and was an infrequent subject in its iconography, had been dragged into service. The party's colours were purple and yellow, and its salute a clenched fist thrust above the head, embarrassingly reminiscent, at least to anyone with a sense of history - which clause thus excluded most members of the party - of the Black Power salute given by American athletes at the 1968 Mexico Olympics. One waggish journalist of the Left, upon first seeing the salute, asked if this were meant to represent the legendary tight-fistedness of the Veneti, and the first appearance of the purple and yellow flags and matching T-shirts had, alas, coincided with the use of the same colours in the spring collection of a notoriously gay designer.

But the intensity of Marcolini's rhetoric and the faith of his listeners had easily overcome these initial obstacles, and within six years of its establishment, Lega Doge had already won the mayorships of four towns in the Veneto and numerous seats on the city councils of Verona, Brescia, and Treviso. Politicians in Rome had begun to pay attention to Signor Marcolini and his ... the Right talked of his ideas, while the Left referred to his opinions. He was courted by those politicians who thought Marcolini might be useful to them, causing Brunetti to reflect upon the observation made of Hitler by the leader of one of the political parties he would subsequently sweep into oblivion: 'Goodness, the man can talk: we could use him’

As he entered Campo Santa Marina, Brunetti considered who he should appear to be when he arrived. Gruff, of course, a real man who took no nonsense from women or foreigners; well, unless the foreigners were men and Europeans and could speak a civilized language like Italian, though real men spoke in dialect, didn't they? He hadn't known that morning that he would be speaking to Marcolini, or he would have dressed for the occasion, though for the life of him, Brunetti could not imagine the appropriate costume for an appearance at the offices of Lega Doge. Something faintly military, with just a hint of dominance: Marvilli's boots, perhaps?

He crossed in front of the hotel and turned into Ramo Bragadin. The first door on the right opened on to a courtyard and a flight of stairs leading to the offices of Lega Doge. A marble-cutting workshop was located on the ground floor, and Brunetti wondered what the noise would be like upstairs. The bell was quickly answered by a clean-shaven young man wearing a tweed jacket and black jeans. . 'Guido Brunetti,' he said, omitting his title and putting out his hand. ‘I have an appointment with Signor Marcolini.' Brunetti was careful to pronounce the Italian precisely, as though it did not come to him naturally.

The young man, who had a face so thin that his eyes looked even closer together than they were, smiled in return and shook Brunetti's hand. In dialect, he responded, 'He'll be free in a moment, Signore. If you follow me, I'll take you back to his office.'

Brunetti greeted the switch to'dialect with an audible sigh, relieved of the burden of speaking in a foreign language.

Brunetti had no idea how a plumbing millionaire would choose to decorate the offices of his political party, but what he saw here seemed just about right. One wall of the corridor down which the young man led him had windows that looked out on to the houses opposite and back towards Campo Santa Marina. The other wall was covered with pairs of crossed Lega flags on long wooden poles, about the size of those carried at the head of the Palio parade and thus somewhat outsized for the not very high corridor. There were a few shields, obvious modern copies of medieval originals, which looked like they were made from heavily shellacked papier mache. The young man preceded him into a large room, the ceiling of which contained a newly and quite excessively restored fresco of some celestial event, attendance at which had clearly necessitated the baring, not only of swords, but of great areas of pink female flesh. White stucco decorations encircled the painting with a nervous halo while pastel swirls spread menacingly away from it towards the corners of the room.

Six chairs made of a wood so highly glossed it succeeded in looking like plastic stood against one wall, and above them was a gold framed print of Vittorio Emanuele ILT inspecting the troops, perhaps before some disastrous First World War battle. As he studied the scene, Brunetti realized that one of two things had happened: either the artist had added twenty centimetres to the King's height, or most of the men who fought on the Italian side in the First World War were dwarfs.

'It's before Caporetto,' the young man said.

'Ah,' Brunetti let escape him, 'a significant battle.'

There are sure to be more’ the young man said in a voice so full of longing that Brunetti had to stop himself from staring at. him.

'No doubt’ Brunetti said, then gave a nod of manly satisfaction in the direction of the pictured scene.

A red plush sofa that looked as if it had begun life in a French brothel stood against the far wall, and above it were more prints, these of actual battles. The weapons differed, but all of them managed to bring to his knees a young man in uniform who held the Italian flag aloft with one hand while clutching at his heart with the other.

On the table in front of the sofa lay a series of purple and yellow pamphlets and booklets, their covers all bearing the distinctive griffin, flying protectively over the Italian flag. Brunetti looked up from them and smiled at the young man.

Before either could speak, a voice called out something from behind a door at one end of the room, prompting the young man to hurry towards it, saying over his shoulder, 'He'll see you now.'

Brunetti followed him. The young man stepped inside and snapped his heels together in the balletic equivalent, Brunetti thought, of the clenched-fist salute. 'Signor Brunetti to see you, Commendatore’ he said, and actually bowed to usher Brunetti in.

As soon as Brunetti passed in front of him, the young mart stepped back into the other room, pulling the door shut behind him. Brunetti heard his footsteps click away into the distance. He glanced across the room at the figure just getting to his feet... And recognized the man who had been in the hospital with Patta.

Brunetti hid his surprise by raising his hand to cover his mouth as he cleared his throat. He turned his face away and coughed once, twice, then continued towards the desk, allowing himself an embarrassed smile.

In another culture, Giuliano Marcolini might have been described as fat: Italians, however, graced with a language from which euphemism springs with endless sympathy, would describe him as 'robusto’ He was shorter than Brunetti, but his barrel-like chest and the stomach visible below it made him look shorter still. He wore a suit similar to the one he had been wearing when Brunetti had first seen him, but even the vertical grey stripes of this one could not disguise his girth. The extra flesh on his face ironed out all wrinkles and made him look not significantly older than Brunetti.

His eyes were deeply recessed, the clear eyes of a Northerner, though he was tanned dark as an Arab. His ears were particularly large and seemed even more so because of the shortness of his hair. His nose was long and thick, his hands those of a labourer.

'Ah, Commissario,' he said, getting to his feet. He came across the room, moving gracefully for so thick a man. Brunetti took his hand with a smile that he did not allow to falter as Marcolini tried to crush all of the bones in his hand. Brunetti returned the pressure, increased it, and Marcolini let go, smiling appreciatively at whatever had just taken place.

He waved Brunetti to a chair identical to those in the other room, grabbed another one and pulled it round to face Brunetti. 'What can I do for you, Commissario?' Marcolini asked. Behind him was a wooden desk, the surface covered with files, papers, a telephone, and a number of photographs in silver frames, their backs to Brunetti.

'Find a doctor to look at my hand’ Brunetti said with a chuckle he made sound very hearty while he waved his hand in the air between them.

Marcolini laughed out loud. ‘I like to get the sense of a man when I meet him’ he said. 'That's one way to do it.'

Brunetti kept to himself the suggestion that smiling politely and introducing himself might perhaps serve as well and would certainly be less painful. 'And?' Brunetti asked. 'What do you think?' He spoke dialect and put a rough edge on his voice.

'I think maybe we can talk to one another.'

Brunetti leaned towards him, started to speak, and then consciously stopped, as if he had thought better of it.

'What?' Marcolini asked.

Brunetti said, *My job seldom lets me speak like a real man. Openly, that is. We're in the habit of being careful about what we say. Have to be. Part of the job.'

'Careful what you say about what?' Marcolini asked.

'Oh, you know. I wouldn't want to express an opinion that would offend anyone or that would sound aggressive or offensive in any way.' Brunetti spoke in a sort of patter, as though these were things he had been forced by rote, and against his will, to learn to say.

'To be politically correct?' Marcolini asked, pronouncing the foreign words with a thick accent.

Brunetti made no effort to disguise the scorn in his laughter. 'Yes, to be politically correct,' he answered, pronouncing the words with an accent just as strong as Marcolini's.

'Who do you have to be careful about?' Marcolini asked as though he were genuinely interested.

'Oh, you know. Colleagues, the press, the people we arrest.'

‘You have to treat them all the same way, even the people you arrest?' Marcolini asked with manufactured surprise.

Brunetti answered with a smile he tried to make as sly as possible. 'Of course. Everyone's equal, Signor Marcolini.'

'Even extracomunitaria?' Marcolini asked with ham-fisted sarcasm.

Brunetti confined himself to a puffing noise rich with disgust. He was a man who could not yet trust himself with words, but who wanted mis fellow spirit to know how he felt about foreigners.

'My father called them niggers,' Marcolini volunteered. 'He fought in Ethiopia.'

'Mine was there, too,' Brunetti, whose father had fought in Russia, lied.

'It started so well. My father told me they lived like princes. But then it all fell apart.' Marcolini could not have sounded more cheated if all those things had been taken away from him, as well.

'And now they're all here,' Brunetti said with fierce disgust, oh, so slowly lowering the cards from in front of his chest. He threw up his hands in a gesture redolent of helpless outrage.

'You're not a member, are you?' Marcolini asked, apparently not thinking it necessary to be more specific.

'Of the Lega?' Brunetti asked. 'No.' He allowed a short pause and then added, though it was by now clearly no more necessary than

Marcolini's identifying of the Lega, 'Not a formal member, at any rate.'

'What does that mean?' Marcolini surprised him by asking.

That I mink it's wisest to keep my political ideas to myself’ Brunetti said, a man refreshed at finally being able to speak the truth. But then, to avoid any possible confusion, he added, 'At least it's best to do so while I'm at work or working’

‘I see, I see’ Marcolini said. 'But what brings you here, Commissario? Conte Falier called and asked if I'd meet you. You're his son-in-law, aren't you?'

'Yes’ Brunetti agreed in a neutral voice. 'As a matter of fact, it's about your son-in-law that I'd like to speak to you’

'What about him?' Marcolini asked instantly, with some curiosity but little enthusiasm.

'My department got drawn into his trouble with the Carabinieri,' Brunetti said, his voice suggesting displeasure at the memory.

'How?'

The night of the raid, I was called to the hospital to see him.'

'I thought that was the Carabinieri’ Marcolini said.

'Yes, it was, but our office never processed the notice from the Carabinieri, so when it happened, we were called.' Affecting the voice of an irritated bureaucrat, Brunetti added, 'It wasn't our case, but I was told a citizen had been attacked.'

'So you went?'

'Of course. When they call you, you have to go’ Brunetti said, pleased with how much he sounded like the little drummer boy.

'Right. But you still haven't told me why you're here.'

'I'd like, first, to be completely frank with you, Signore’ Brunetti said.

Marcolini's nod was surprisingly gracious.

'My superior doesn't like it that we've been mixed up in Carabinieri business, so he's asked me to look into it.' Brunetii paused, as if to check that Marcolini was following him, and at the older man's nod, he went on. 'We've been given different stories about the child. One version says it's Pedrolli's child by some extracomunitaria woman he met in the South’ he said, managing to put as much contempt as he dared into the words, 'extracomunitaria' and 'South'. He saw this register with Marcolini and went on, 'Then there's the other story that says it was this woman's child by her husband.' He paused to let Marcolini speak.

'Why do you want to know about this, Commissario?'

'As I told you, Signore, if it's not Pedrolli's child, then we think we should leave it to the Carabinieri.' He smiled, then went on. 'But if the child is his, then some intervention from my superiors, as well as from you, might make enough difference to help.'

'Intervention?' Marcolini asked. 'Help? I don't know what you're talking about’

Brunetti put on an expression of limpid good will. 'With the social services, Signore. The child will probably end up in an orphanage.' This was fact, leaving Brunetti to continue with the fiction. ‘It might be possible, in the end - and for the child's good - for him to be returned to his parents.'

'His parents,' Marcolini exploded, his voice stripped of all affability,'... are a pair of Albanians who sneaked into this country illegally.' He paused for effect and then repeated, 'Albanians, for the love of God.'

Rather than respond to this, Brunetti changed his expression to one of the most intense interest, and Marcolini went on, 'The mother is probably some sort of whore; whatever she is, she was willing enough to sell the baby for ten thousand Euros. So if he's put in an orphanage and kept away from her, it's all the better for him.'

‘I didn't know that, Signore,' Brunetti said, sounding disapproving.

'I'm sure there's a lot about this you don't know and that the Carabinieri don't know’ Marcolini said with mounting anger. 'That his story about his affair in Cosenza is a lie. He went down there for some sort of medical conference, and while he was there, he made a deal to buy the baby’ Brunetti managed to express surprise at hearing this, as if he were hearing about it for the first time.

Marcolini got to his feet and walked behind his desk. ‘I could understand if it really happened the way he said in the beginning. A man has needs, and he was away for a week, so I'd understand if he'd knocked her up. And then at least it would be his son. But Gustavo's never been the type who knows how to have a good time, and all this was was some little Albanian bastard his mother brought to market, and my son-in-law was stupid enough to buy it and bring it home.'

Marcolini picked up one of the photos on his desk and brought it back with him. Standing over Brunetti, he pressed the frame into his hand. 'Look, look at him, the little Albanian.'

Brunetti looked at the photo and saw Pedrolli, his wife and, between them, a tow-headed infant with a round face and dark eyes.

Marcolini paced away, turned at the wall, and came back to Brunetti. 'You should have seen him, the little cuckoo, with his square Albanian head, flat at the back the way they all are. You think I want my daughter to be his mother? You think I'm going to let something like that inherit everything I've worked for all my life?' He took the photo back and tossed it face down on to his desk. Brunetti heard the glass shatter, but Marcolini must not have heard it or must not have cared, for he snatched up another one and thrust it at Brunetti.

'Look, there's Bianca when she was two. That's what a baby is supposed to look like.' Brunetti gazed at the photo of a tow-headed infant with a round face and dark eyes. He said nothing but was careful to nod in appreciation of whatever it was he was meant to detect in the photo. 'Well?' demanded Marcolini. 'Isn't she? Isn't she what a baby's supposed to look like?'

Brunetti handed it back, saying, 'She's very beautiful, Signore. Then and now.'

'And married to a fool,' Marcolini said and let himself down heavily into his chair.

'But aren't you worried for her, Signore?' Brunetti asked in a voice he struggled to fill with concern.

'Worried about what?'

That she'll miss the baby?'

'Miss it?' Marcolini asked, and then he put his head back and laughed. 'Who do you think made me make the phone call?'

 

22

 

Brunetti could neither hide nor disguise his astonishment. His mouth hung open for a second before he thought to close it. ‘I see’ he said, but in an unsteady voice.

'Surprised you, didn't I?' Marcolini said with a deep laugh. 'Well, she surprised me, too, I have to confess. I thought she'd taken to the child: that's what kept me quiet for so long, though the older he got, the more I saw him turning into a little Albanian. He didn't look like one of us,' he said, his voice earnest. 'And I don't mean me and Bianca or my wife: he just didn't look like an Italian.'

Marcolini looked to see if he had Brunetti's attention, and though he certainly had that, Brunetti did his best to make it look as if he had

his approval, as well. ‘But I wasn't sure because, well, she seemed to take to him, and I didn't want to do anything or say anything that would hurt her feelings or make things difficult between us.'

'Of course,' Brunetti said with a friendly smile, one father to another. Then he prodded, 'But?'

'But then one day she was at home - my home, our home, that is. The day there was that story in the paper about that Romanian woman who sold her baby. Down in the South,' Marcolini added with particular contempt. 'That’s where everything happens. They don't know the meaning of honour.'

Brunetti nodded, as though he had never heard a greater truth spoken.

‘I said something. I was angry, and as soon as I said it, I was afraid I might have said too much. At any rate, that's when she told me that they had done the same thing, well, that she thought that’s what Gustavo had done. Anyway, the baby wasn't his.' Marcolini broke off, as if to see that Brunetti was still following his story. Brunetti made no attempt to disguise his mounting interest.

'Until that time, I swear I still thought the baby was Gustavo's, and that he looked the way he did because of the mother: that her influence was stronger than his. Like with Blacks: you just need a little bit, and the genes take over’ From the way Marcolini spoke, he might as well have been Mendel, explaining the rules that governed his peas.

'But then Bianca told me what had really happened. Some colleague of his - someone he was at medical school with - was working in Cosenza, and one of his patients was going to have a baby and wanted to, well, to give it up’

‘For adoption?' asked an artfully ingenuous Brunetti.

'You can call it that if you want,' Marvilli said with a complicit smile. 'So Gustavo went down to talk to his friend and to this woman, and when he came back he explained things to Bianca, and she agreed because she said Gustavo said it was the only chance they'd ever have to have a baby. She told me she really didn't want to, but he persuaded her. They were too old to be allowed to adopt a baby - maybe an older child, but not a baby - and the tests always said they couldn't have children.' Marcolini stopped and gave a short, barking laugh. 'That's about the only thing we ever got out of Gustavo's being a doctor: he could at least interpret all the figures on the tests. So Bianca agreed.'

‘I see,' Brunetti muttered. 'So he went and got the baby?'

'Yes. It's easy enough down there, to do things like that. He went into the Anagrafe and said it was his baby, and the woman signed it with him, confirming that it was.' Marcolini cast his eyes at the ceiling in a manner Brunetti judged melodramatic, then continued. 'She probably doesn't even know how to read and write, but she signed the document, and then the baby was his. And he gave her ten thousand Euros’

Marcolini's anger was no longer melodramatic, but real. ‘It was only later that he told Bianca how much he paid. The fool’

It was evident from his manner that he had something further to add, so Brunetti sat quietly, the look of intense interest still on his face, and Marcolini continued, ‘For the love of God, he could have got it for less. That other guy - the one with the Romanian - got it for a permesso di soggiorno and an apartment for the mother to stay in. But no, Dottor Gustavo has to be the gran signore and give her ten thousand Euros’

Lost for words, Marcolini threw his hands in the air, then went on. 'She probably spent it on drugs or sent it back to her family in Albania. Ten thousand Euros,' he repeated, clearly unable sufficiently to express his disgust.

'And when he brought it back, I saw immediately what was wrong with it, but, as I said, I thought it was the mother's influence. You'd think all babies look alike, but this one... I knew right away that it wasn't one of us. You just have to look at those little eyes and that head’ Marcolini shook his own head in disbelief, and Brunetti murmured in assent and encouragement, hoping to keep the man talking.

'But Bianca's my daughter,' Marcolini continued, and it seemed to Brunetti now that he was talking to himself as much as to his listener. 'And I thought she wanted the child, too. Then that day she told me what she really felt, and that the baby was just a chore for her, something she had to take care of and that she really didn't want. It was Gustavo who was crazy for him, couldn't wait to get home so he could play with him. Paid no attention to her any more, just to the baby, and she didn't like that.' 'I see,' Brunetti said.

'So I said something like, "Just like in the papers today, huh?" because of what we'd been talking about. I meant that Gustavo got the baby the same way, but Bianca thought I meant the way the police found out.'

'A telephone call?' Brunetti asked, making himself sound very proud at having figured it out.

'Yes, a telephone call to the Carabinieri.'

'And that's when she asked you to make the call, I imagine,' Brunetti said, knowing he would not believe it until he heard Marcolini spell it out.

'Yes, call them and tell them Gustavo had bought the baby. After all, the woman's name was on the birth certificate along with his, so it would be easy for them to find her.'

'And that's just what happened, isn't it?' Brunetti asked. He forced himself to imbue his voice with approval, even a small measure of enthusiasm.

'I had no idea what would happen after they found out,' Marcolini said. 'And I suppose Bianca didn't, either. She said she was terrified the night they came. She thought they were terrorists or robbers or something.' Marcolini's voice had grown unsteady as he considered his daughter's suffering. I didn't expect them to go breaking into the house the way they did.'

'Of course not’ Brunetti agreed.

'God knows how much they frightened her.'

It must have been terrible for them’ Brunetti allowed himself to say.

‘Yes. I didn't want that to happen, per carita.'

'I can certainly understand that.'

'And I suppose they shouldn't have been so rough with Gustavo’ Marcolini added in a lacklustre voice.

'No, of course not.'

The clouds parted and Marcolini's voice warmed. 'But it solved the problem, didn't it?' he asked. Then, as if suddenly aware who he had been speaking to, he asked, 'I can trust you, can't I?'

Brunetti pulled his face into a broad smile and said, 'You needn't ask that, Signore. After all, our fathers fought together, didn't they?' Then, stunned by the realization, he added, 'Besides, nothing you did was actually illegal, was it?'

'No, it wasn't, was it?' Marcolini asked with a sly smile, obviously having long since arrived at this truth. He reached over and gave Brunetti's shoulder a friendly, manly squeeze.

Brunetti was suddenly conscious of how easy it would be, now, to keep Marcolini talking. All he would have to do was ask him more questions, and Marcolini was sure to answer them, perhaps even honestly. It was a common enough phenomenon, though Brunetti had most frequently observed it among the people he was questioning in regard to crimes they were accused of having committed. The point came when the subject believed he had won the sympathy of his questioner and, in return, placed his trust in him. After this, people would even confess to crimes about which no questions had been asked, almost as if there was no length to which they would not go in order to maintain the good will of their listener. But Marcolini, as the man himself had agreed with great pleasure, had committed no crime. Indeed, he had acted as would any conscientious citizen and had reported one to the police.

It was this thought that forced Brunetti to his feet. He clung to the remnants of the role he was playing as he said, ‘I’m very grateful for your time, Signor Marcolini’ He forced himself to extend his hand and said, ‘I’ll report to the Questore what you've told me.'

The older man stood and took Brunetti's extended hand. He smiled in a friendly manner, then turned and moved towards the door. At the sight of Marcolini's thick, expensively clothed back, Brunetti found himself overcome by the desire to strike him. He saw himself knocking the older man to the floor, but that would serve no purpose unless he were also able to kick the man, and he knew he could not do that. So he followed Marcolini across the room.

The older man opened the door and stood aside to let Brunetti pass. Marcolini raised a hand, and Brunetti knew he was going to clap him on the shoulder or pat him on the arm. The thought filled him with something close to horror; he knew he could not stand that. He quickened his pace and slipped past Marcolini, took two steps and then turned, as though surprised that the other man had not followed close behind him.

Thank you for your time, Signore’ Brunetti said, squeezing out a last smile.

'Not at all,' Marcolini said, rocking back on his heels and folding his arms across his chest. 'Always happy to be of help to the police.'

Brunetti tasted something metallic, muttered words even he did not understand, and left the building.

 

23

 

 

Outside, Brunetti felt himself assailed by a chorus of Furies whispering, 'Eighteen months, eighteen months, eighteen months.' They had had the child for eighteen months, and then Bianca Marcolini had asked her father to arrange to have it taken away, as though the little boy were an unwanted piece of furniture or a kitchen appliance she had bought on warranty and had decided to return.

By the time either one of his children was eighteen months old, Paola could have told Brunetti they resulted from her union with the postman, the garbage man, the parish priest, for all he cared, and he would have loved them none the less. Brunetti pulled himself up short; here he went again, judging the entire world by his own experience, as if there were no other standard with which to measure human behaviour.

He continued walking towards the Questura, but however much he tried to rid himself of the sound of these voices, he failed to do so. He was so distracted that he almost bumped into Patta, who was coming out of the main door.

'Ah, Brunetti’ the Vice-Questore said, 'coming back from a meeting, are you?'

Brunetti slapped an expression of distracted busyness on his face. ‘Yes, Dottore, I am, but don't let me keep you from yours.' How else to make polite note of the fact that the Vice-Questore was leaving for home two hours early?

Brunetti felt it best that Patta should not learn what he was up to, especially not that he had just been asking questions of the leader of a political party of growing significance in the Veneto. Patta believed that only waiters had the right to ask questions of politicians; everyone else should only stand and wait.

'What sort of meeting?' Patta asked.

Brunetti recalled the description the Marquis de Custine had given of the customs officers at the port of St Petersburg and said, 'Someone was complaining about the port, that the customs officers were taking bribes or making it difficult for people who didn't pay them.'

'Nothing new there’ Patta said with little patience, pulled on his gloves, and turned away.

When Brunetti reached the first floor, he went to the officers' room and was relieved to see Vianello and Pucetti. He gave no thought to whether they had discovered anything about the pharmacist, nor whether they could help him resolve this case: Brunetti was simply happy to be in their company and to know that they were men who would share his visceral disgust at what Marcolini had just told him.

He came into the office quietly. Vianello looked up and smiled, then Pucetti did the same. Their desks were covered with papers and files; an ink smear ran across Pucetti's chin. Strangely, Brunetti found himself too moved at the sight of them to speak: two entirely normal men, sitting at their desks and doing their jobs.

Vianello's smile, however, was that of a predator that has just glimpsed the dappled brown coat of a fawn at the edge of the forest glade. 'What is it?' Brunetti asked.

'Have you seen Signorina Elettra?' the Inspector enquired. Brunetti noticed that Pucetti was looking at him with much the same grin.

'No. Why?'

'Signor Brunini's companion had a phone call last night.'

It took Brunetti a moment to process this information: the telefonino he had bought and the number he had given at the clinic, the number of Signor Brunini, the phone Signorina Elettra had said she would see to answering.

'And?' asked Brunetti.

'And the caller said he thought he might be able to be of help to Signor Brunini and, of course, to the Signorina.'

"That's all?' Brunetti asked.

'Signorina Elettra could not help becoming emotional when he gave her the news.' Brunetti did not respond, so the Inspector went on. 'She kept saying, "a baby, a baby," until the man said that, yes, he was talking about a baby.'

'And now what? Did he leave a number?'

Vianello's smile grew broader. 'Better. He agreed to meet her and Signor Brunini. She told me that, even when he told her where and when they should meet, she was still unable to stop her tears.'

Brunetti could not help smiling. 'And?'

'And I wondered what you wanted to do,' Vianello said.

Marvilli had behaved honestly, even generously, towards them: the least they could do was return the favour with a piece of information that might help advance his career. Besides, it could never hurt to have another friend among the Carabinieri. He could call Marvilli himself, but it would be more subtle if the call came from Vianello: that would appear less like what it was: repayment of a personal favour. 'It belongs to the Carabinieri,' Brunetti finally said. 'Would you call Marvilli?'

'And the meeting?'

'Tell him about it. If they want us to go, we will. But it's theirs: they decide.'

'All right,' Vianello said but made no move for the phone. 'It's not until the day after tomorrow,' he said.

Brunetti cleared his throat and addressed himself to the reason he had come. You finished with the names that were on Franchi's computer?'

‘Justnow’ Vianello said. 'We've gone through the files and found about a dozen with information that someone-might be interested in.'

How wonderfully diplomatic the Inspector was being today, Brunetti thought. 'You mean blackmail them about?' he asked.

Pucetti laughed, turned to Vianello and said, ‘I told you it was better just to say it.'

Vianello went on. 'I think we should divide the files among the three of us and go and talk to them.'

'Not on the phone?' Pucetti asked, unable to disguise his surprise.

Brunetti spoke before Vianello had time to answer, conscious of what sort of information might be in those files. 'The first contact, yes, to see if there is reason to talk to them, and then in person.' He pointed at the folders. 'Is any of it criminal?'

Vianello put his hand out horizontally and waggled it a few times. 'There are two who are taking an awful lot of tranquillizers, but that's the doctors' fault, not theirs, I'd say.'

It sounded pretty tame to Brunetti. 'Nothing better?' he asked, struck by how strange the word sounded.

'I've got one that might be,' Pucetti said diffidently.

Both men turned to look at the young officer, who rooted around in the files on his desk and finally pulled one out. If s an American woman’ he began.

Shoplifting, was Brunetti's immediate unspoken thought, but then he realized that a pharmacist was unlikely to have information about that.

'Well,' temporized Pucetti, 'it's really maybe her husband.'

Vianello sighed audibly, and Pucetti said, 'She's been into the Pronto Soccorso five times in the last two years.'

Neither of them said anything.

'The first time was a broken nose’ said Pucetti, opening the file and running his finger down the first page. He flipped it over and started down the second. 'Then, three months later, she was back with a very bad cut on her wrist. She said she cut it on a wine glass that fell into the sink.'

'Uh huh,' Vianello muttered.

'Six months passed, and then she was back with two broken ribs.'

'Fell down the stairs, I suppose?' Vianello offered.

'Exactly,' answered Pucetti. He flipped over another page and said, 'Then her knee: torn ligaments: tripped on a bridge.'

Neither Brunetti nor Vianello said anything. The sound of the next page turning was loud in the silence from the two men.

'And then, last month, she dislocated her shoulder.'

'Falling down the stairs again?' asked Vianello.

Pucetti closed the file. It doesn't say’

'Are they residents?'" Brunetti asked.

They have an apartment, but they come as tourists,' Pucetti answered. 'She pays her hospital bills in cash’

'Then how'd she get on his computer?' Brunetti asked.

'She went into the pharmacy to get painkillers the first time’ Pucetti said.

'Quite a lot of them, it would seem’ Vianello muttered.

Ignoring Vianello's remark, Pucetti completed his explanation, 'And so she's in his computer’

Brunetti considered the wisdom of pursuing this but decided against. 'Let's begin with Venetians or, at least, Italians, and see if we can get anyone to speak to us. If they realize we know whatever it is he's been blackmailing them about, then they might tell us. And we might find out who broke into his pharmacy, as well’

"There's the blood samples’ Vianello said, reminding them but not sounding at all optimistic that any results would be ready yet. 'It might be easier if we could match that sample with the blood type of someone in the files. They've been with Bocchese since the break-in.'

'Or in some lab’ Brunetti said. He grabbed the phone and dialled Bocchese's number. The technician answered.

'Those blood samples?' Brunetti said.

'Thank you, Dottore, for asking. I'm fine. Glad to hear you are, too’

'Sorry, Bocchese, but we're in something of a hurry here.'

'You're always in a hurry, Commissario. We scientific types know how to take life more easily. For example, we have to wait for specimens to come back from laboratories, and that teaches us the virtue of patience.'

'When will they be back?'

'The results should have been here yesterday’ Bocchese said.

'Can you call them?'

'And ask them what?'

To tell you whatever they found in the blood.'

'If I call them and they have it, they can just as easily send me the information by email.'

'Would you call them’ Brunetti said in a voice he struggled to keep as placid and polite as he could, 'and ask them if they'd send you the results?'

'Of course. I'd be delighted. Shall I call you back if I get anything?'

'You are kindness itself’ Brunetti said.

Bocchese snorted and hung up.

Neither of the others bothered to ask, both aware of the sovereign truth that Bocchese worked at a rhythm set by and known only to himself.

Brunetti replaced the phone with studied patience. 'The ways of the Lord are infinite’ was the only thing he could think of to say.

'How shall we do this?' Vianello asked, displaying no apparent interest in the ways of the Lord.

'Do you know any of the people on the list?' Brunetti asked.

Vianello nodded and picked up one of the files. Pucetti searched until he found the file he was looking for.

'Let me have a look’ Brunetti said. He took the list of names and read through it, recognizing two, a young woman colleague of Paola's he had met once and a surgeon at the hospital who had operated on the mother of a friend of his.

Given the time, they agreed that the best thing they could do now was for each of them to call the people they knew and arrange appointments for the following day. Brunetti went up to his office and read through the files. Dottor Malapiero had first been prescribed L-dopa three years before. Even Brunetti recognized this as the drug most commonly used against the first symptoms of Parkinson's.

As for Paola's colleague, Brunetti had met Daniela Carlon once, a chance meeting, when he and Paola had joined her for a coffee and a conversation that had turned out to be far more pleasant than he had anticipated. The immediate prospect of listening to a professor of English literature and a professor of Persian was not one that had at first thrilled Brunetti, but the discovery that Daniela had spent years in the Middle East with her husband, an archaeologist still working in Syria, had changed that. Soon, they were talking about Arrian and Quintus Curtius, while Paola looked on silently, upstaged for once in the discussion of books but not at all troubled by that fact.

According to her records, Daniela Carlon had been hospitalized for an abortion two months before, the foetus in its third month. And according to what Brunetti remembered of their conversation, which had taken place shortly before, her husband had been in Syria for the previous eight months.

Brunetti chose to do the easy call first and learned from the doctor's wife that Dottor Malapiero was in Milano and would not be back for two days. He left no message and said that he would call again.

Daniela answered the phone and, after her initial confusion that Brunetti had called, and not Paola, asked, 'What is it, Guido?'

'I'd like to talk to you’

The pause that followed stretched out until it was too long and embarrassingly significant.

‘It’s about work’ Brunetti added awkwardly.

‘Your work or mine?'

'Mine, unfortunately’

'Why unfortunately?' she asked.

This was exactly the situation Brunetti had wanted to avoid, having the conversation on the telephone, where he could not observe her responses or weigh her expressions as they spoke.

'Because it has to do with an investigation.'

'A police investigation?' she asked, making no attempt to disguise her astonishment. 'What have I got to do with a police investigation?'

‘I’m not at all sure; that's why I'd like to discuss this in person’ Brunetti said.

'And I'd like to discuss it now’ she said, her voice suddenly hard.

'Perhaps tomorrow morning?' he suggested.

'I'm not free tomorrow morning’ she said, offering no details. When Brunetti said nothing, she went on, 'Look, Guido, I have no idea why the police might want to talk to me, but I'll admit that I'm curious.'

Brunetti knew when a person would not concede. 'All right’ he said. 'It's about your medical records.'

'What about my medical records?' she asked coolly.

'They say that you terminated a pregnancy three months ago.' ‘Yes.'

'Daniela’ he began, feeling himself like a suspect, 'what I want to know is if anyone ...'

'Knows about this?' she completed the question for him, her voice blistering with rage. 'Other than that creepy little pharmacist, that is?'

Brunetti felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. He fought to keep control of his voice and said, 'He called?'

'He called Luca's mother. That's who he called’ she shouted down the phone, all restraint gone. 'He called her and asked if she knew what her daughter-in-law had done, if she knew that her daughter-in-law had been in the hospital and had destroyed a baby, that she had been pregnant.'

Brunetti's fingers tightened on the phone. She started to cry, and Brunetti listened to her sobbing for more than a minute.

Finally he said, ‘Daniela, Daniela, can you hear me? Is there anything.. .' The only response was the continued sound of her sobbing. Brunetti thought of calling Paola and asking her to go to Daniela's home, but he did not want to involve Paola in this, did not want her to know he had made this call and done what he had done.

After some time, Daniela stopped crying and Brunetti listened to her sniff, then to the strangely comforting sound of her blowing her nose, then her voice returned. It was .. ‘

'I don't want to know,' Brunetti said, too loudly. 'I don't want to know anything about it, Daniela. If s none of my business and none of the police's business.'

'Then why are you calling me?' she demanded, still angry but at least no longer in tears.

‘I want to know what Dottor Franchi wanted.'

'God knows what he wanted,' she said angrily. 'That everyone should be a quiet little castrato, just like him.'

'Did he call you?'

‘I just told you: he called my mother-in-law. No, he didn't call me. He called her. Can I make that any clearer?'

'Did he ask for money?'

'Money?' she asked and then started to laugh, a strange sound hard to distinguish from her crying. After a time she stopped and said, 'No, he didn't want anything, no money, no sex, no anything. He just wanted the sinner to be punished’

‘I’m sorry, Daniela,' he said, meaning that he was sorry both for her pain and for having asked her about it.

‘I’m sorry too’ she answered. Is that enough?' she asked.

.'Yes, it is’

'You don't want to know anything about it?'

'I told you: it's none of my business’

'Then goodbye, Guido. I'm sorry we had to talk about this’

'I am, too, Daniela’ he said and put down the phone.

 

24

 

 

Her voice broke him. Brunetti set the receiver down softly, as if afraid it would break, too. He got to his feet and, with the stealth of a burglar, went down the stairs and outside. The rain had cleaned the streets a few days previously, but already the grit and dirt had returned; he felt them underfoot, or perhaps that was his imagination and the streets were clean and the only dirt came from the things his work made him privy to. People passed him, looking entirely normal and innocent and untouched; some of them looked quite happy.

It was as he was walking into Campo Santa Marina that he realized his body had contracted into something that felt like a long, tight knot. He stopped at the edicola and stood quietly for a while, looking at the covers of the magazines on display through the glass, all the while rolling his shoulders in an attempt to loosen them. Tits and ass. Paola had again observed, months ago, that he should spend a day counting the times he saw tits and ass: in the newspapers, in magazines, in ads on the vaporetti, on display in every kind of shop window. It might help him understand, she suggested, the attitude of some women towards men. And here he found himself contemplating evidence, though, strangely enough, he was comforted by the sight of all that lovely flesh. How lovely tits were; how his hand longed to touch that well-curved ass. How much better than what he had just heard, the narrow life-denying nastiness of it. So let there be tits and let there be ass and let them lead people to make small children and to love them.

The thought of having children brought Daniela Carlon back into his mind, though he would rather not have thought about what she had told him. Over the years, he had come to believe that he could have only a second-class opinion about abortion and that his gender deprived him of a vote on the subject. This in no way affected his thoughts or his visceral feelings, but the right to a decision belonged to women on this one, and it behove him to accept this and keep his mouth shut. On the other hand, this was only theory and had little relevance to the raw pain he had heard in her voice.

He felt something against his leg and he looked down to see a mid-sized brown dog sniffing at his shoe, rubbing its flanks contentedly against his calf. It looked up at him, seemed to smile, and returned to his shoe. At the other end of its lead was a young boy, only a little bit taller than the dog.

'Milli, stop that’ he heard a woman's voice call, and then she came up to the boy and took ^ the lead from his hand. ‘I’m sorry, Signore, but she's still a puppy.'

'And loves shoes?' Brunetti asked, his good spirits lifted by the appealing absurdity of the situation.

She laughed, and he saw that her teeth were perfect in her well-tanned face. It seems so,' she said. She extended her hand to her son and said, 'Come on, Stefano. Let's take Milli home and give her a treat.'

The boy extended his free hand and, with some reluctance, she gave him back the lead.

The dog must have sensed the tremors of the change of command, for she scampered off, tossing her back legs high in the air in the manner of small dogs, though she ran off slowly enough to allow the boy to be towed after her without danger of his falling.

His heart lifted and remained that way for a moment until his thoughts scampered on and found themselves faced with Dottor Franchi. What was it that Pedrolli had called him, 'exquisitely moral'? To form such a judgement, Pedrolli must have heard talk or, just as likely, listened to the pharmacist as he spoke about his clients or the wider world, or whatever subject would enable a listener to form that opinion of him. Thinking back, Brunetti remembered the startled look Signora Invernizzi had given Franchi when he had remarked on the drug addicts' inability to help themselves.

Was he a chameleon, then, Dottor Franchi, keeping his judgements to himself when he thought they might offend someone whose good opinion he sought, only to reveal them to those he considered his inferiors? In Brunetti's experience, it was not uncommon for people to behave in this fashion. Was this one of the reasons why people married, then, to free themselves to say what they thought and thus spare themselves the terrible exhaustion of leading a double life? Then what of Bianca Marcolini: what life could she lead if any day, any moment, her husband were to discover what her father had done at her urging? It had been so easy to lead Marcolini into boasting about his phone call; surely, she must have known that, sooner or later, her husband would learn what had actually happened. No, not what had happened, but why it had happened. The bolt struck Brunetti then: Pedrolli would never learn what had happened to the child, only why it had.

He became aware that the tension had returned to his shoulders and that he was still standing in front of the edicola, gazing open-mouthed at the naked bodies on the covers of the magazines. In a chill moment of lucidity, he saw what Paola meant they were there, on display, these young women, naked and undefended and inviting any attention a man might please to give them.

Trapped, his eyes moved to the left and fell on a column of bright-coloured covers, each of which displayed a bare-breasted woman in a posture of submission: some bound with straps, some with ropes, and some with chains. Some looked frightened; some looked happy; they all looked excited.

He pulled his eyes away and looked at the facade of Palazzo Dolfin. 'She's right,' he said under his breath.

‘You going to stand there all day talking to yourself?' he heard someone ask in a loud, angry voice. He drew his attention away from the building and turned. The news vendor was standing less than a metre from him, his face red. Again he asked, 'You going to stand there all day? What’s next, you put your hands in your pockets?'

Brunetti raised a hand to defend himself, to explain, but then he let it drop and walked away, out of the campo and towards his home.

He had heard that people who had pets often found them at the door of their homes when they returned from work, that animals had some sixth sense that alerted them to the approach of what they no doubt thought of as their pet humans. When he reached the top of the steps and began to hunt for his keys, the door opened to reveal Paola, just inside. He could not disguise his joy at seeing her.

'Bad day?' she asked.

'How did you know?'

'I heard you coming up the stairs and it sounded like the tread of a weary man, so I thought it might help if I opened the door and told you how it lifts my heart that you are here’

'You know, you're right about the tits and ass in magazines,' he blurted out.

She tilted her head to one side and studied his face. 'Come in, Guido. I think you might need a glass of wine.'

He smiled. ‘I capitulate to you about something we've argued about for decades, and all you can do is offer me a glass of wine?' he asked.

'Why, what did you want instead?'

'How about some tits and ass?' he asked, making a grab for her.

After dinner, he trailed her down to her study. He had drunk little wine with dinner and had no desire now save to sit and talk and listen to what she might have to say about something he still did not know how to refer to: the Pedrolli disaster was perhaps as good as he could manage.

'The pharmacist in Campo Sant'Angelo?' she asked when he had finished telling the story -in what he hoped was a chronological, but what he feared was a garbled, manner.

Brunetti sat beside her, his arms folded across his chest. 'You know him?'

'No. It's out of the way for me. Besides, it's one of those campi where you don't think of stopping, isn't it? You just walk across it on your way to Accademia or Rialto: I've never even bought one of those cotton shirts from the place by the bridge’

Brunetti's inner map focused on the campo, viewed first from the entrance from the bridge and then from Calle della Mandola. A restaurant where he had never eaten, an art gallery, the inevitable real estate agency, the edicola with the chocolate Labrador.

He was summoned from these cartographical considerations by Paola, who asked, 'You think he'd do that? Call and tell people about his clients?'

'I used to think there were limits to what people were capable of doing,' Brunetti said. 'But I don't think that any more. Given the right stimuli, we're all probably capable of anything.' He listened to that statement echo, realized die extent to which it was a response to the events of the day, and said quickly, 'No, that's not right, is it?'

‘I hope not,' Paola said. 'But doesn't he take some sort of oath, like a doctor, not to reveal certain things?'

I think so. But I'm sure he's too clever to do this sort of thing openly. All he'd have to do is make a phone call to ask after someone's health: Is Daniela back from the hospital yet?' 'Could you tell Egidio it’s time to renew his prescription?' And if anything embarrassing or shameful were revealed by these calls, well, it was just the faithful family pharmacist, trying to be helpful, showing his concern for his patients' well-being, wasn't it?'

Paola considered this, then turned and put her hand on his arm. 'And it would let him go on thinking of himself in the same way, wouldn't it? If anyone questioned him, he could maintain - not only to them but to himself - that it was merely an excess of zeal on his part.'

'Probably.'

'Nasty little bastard.'

'Most moralists are’ said Brunetti wearily.

'Is there anything you can do about it, or about him?' she asked.

'I don't think so,' Brunetti said. 'One of the strange things about all of this is that, no matter how sordid and disgusting any of it is, the only thing Franchi's done that's illegal is look at those files, and he'd be sure to argue - and believe - that he was simply acting in the best interests of his clients. And Marcolini was doing his duty as a citizen, wasn't he? So was his daughter, I suppose.' Brunetti gave more thought to all of the things that had happened and said, 'And with Pedrolli, the violence of the Carabinieri wouldn't even be judged criminal. They had a judge's order to make their arrests that night. They did ring the doorbell, but the Pedrollis didn't hear it. And Pedrolli admits that he attacked the Carabiniere first.'

'All this pain, all this suffering’ Paola said.

They sat quietly side by side for some time. Finally, Brunetti pushed himself to his feet, went back into the living room and retrieved his copy of the Lettere della Russia, and came back to her study. In the short time he was absent, like water seeking the lowest point, Paola had spread out on the sofa with a book, but once again she pulled her feet back to make room for him.

'Your Russians?' she asked when she saw the book.

He sat down beside her and began to read where he had left off the night before. Paola studied his profile for a moment, then stretched out her feet and slipped them on to his lap, under his book, and returned to her own.

 

The weather worsened the next day, first with a sudden drop in temperature, followed by a torrential rainstorm, both of which cleaned the streets, first of tourists, then of any dirt that remained. Some hours later the sirens announced the first acquo, alta of the autumn, worsened by a fierce bora that sprang up and blew in from the north-east.

Umbrellaed, hatted, booted, and raincoated, a disgruntled Brunetti arrived at the Questura and made what he thought was una brutta figura at the entrance, pausing to shake himself free of water in the manner of a dog. He looked around and saw that the floor was wet for at least a metre in every direction. Heavy-footed and unwilling to talk to anyone, he made his way up the stairs to his office.

He stuffed the umbrella upright behind the door. Let the water run down on to the wooden floor: no one would see it back there. He hung his raincoat in the armadio, tossed his sodden hat on the top shelf, and then sat on a chair to remove his boots. By the time he finally sat behind his desk, he was sweaty and ill-tempered.

The phone rang. 'Si,' he said with singular lack of grace.

'Should I hang up and call back after you've had time to go out for a coffee?' asked Bocchese.

It wouldn't make any difference, and I'd probably be carried away by the acqua alta if I tried to go down to the bar.'

'Is it that bad?' the technician asked. ‘I got here early, and it wasn't bad when I came in.'

'Supposed to peak in an hour, but yes, it's bad.'

'You think any tourists will be drowned?'

'Don't tempt me, Bocchese. You know our phones are tapped, and what we say might get back to the Tourist Board.' He felt suddenly cheered, perhaps because of Bocchese's unwonted chattiness or perhaps by the thought of drowned tourists. 'What have you got for me?'

'HIV,' the technician said and then, into the resulting silence, 'That is, I've got a blood sample that is HTV positive. Or, to be even more precise, I've got the results from the lab - finally - saying that the sample I sent them is positive. B negative blood type, which is relatively rare, and HIV, which is not as rare as it should be.'

'The blood from the pharmacy?'

'Yes.'

'Have you told anyone?'

'No. The email just came in. Why?'

'No reason. I'll talk to Vianello.'

If s not his blood, is it?' Bocchese asked in a neutral voice.

The question so stunned Brunetti that he could not stop himself from barking, 'What?'

A long silence ensued at the other end, after which a curiously sober Bocchese said, ‘I didn't mean it that way. With a sample, we don't know whose it is.'

'Then say it that way,' Brunetti said, still shouting. 'And don't make jokes like that. They're not funny,' he added, his voice still rough, taken aback by the surge of anger he felt towards the technician.

'Sorry,' Bocchese said. 'It's an occupational hazard, I think. We see only pieces of people or samples of people, so we make jokes about them, and maybe we forget about the actual people themselves.'

'It's all right’ Brunetti said, then in a calmer voice, added. ‘I’ll go and tell him.'

'You won't ...' the technician began, but Brunetti cut him off by saying, 'I'll tell him the sample's back.' In a softer voice, he added, 'Don't worry. That's all I'll tell him. We'll see if it matches the blood of anyone we have in the files.'

Bocchese thanked him and said goodbye, in a polite manner, and hung up.

Brunetti went down to find Vianello.

It took them almost no time to find the match among the medical files from Franchi's computer and only a few phone calls to find a possible motive. Piero Cogetto was a lawyer, recently separated from the woman, also a lawyer, with whom he had lived for seven years. He had no history of drug use and had never been arrested.

Once Vianello had that hint, it took him only two more phone calls before he found someone who told him the rest of the story: upon learning that he was HIV positive, Cogetto's fiancee had moved out. She claimed that it was the infidelity and not the disease that made her leave, but this had been treated with a certain amount of scepticism among the people who knew her. The second person Vianello spoke to said she had always maintained that she had learned about his disease when someone told her about it by mistake.

Having recounted all this to Brunetti and Pucetti, Vianello asked, 'What do we do now?'

'If he's positive, he can't go to jail,' Brunetti said, ‘But at least, if we can get him to admit the break-in, we can close the file on the vandalism and get it off the books.' He realized how very much like Patta he sounded and was grateful that the other men did not mention this.

'You think he'll admit it?' "Vianello asked.

Brunetti shrugged. 'Why not? The blood samples match, and a DN A test would probably confirm the match. But he's a lawyer, so he knows there's nothing we can do to him if he's positive.' He was suddenly weary and wanted all this to be over.

'I'd understand if he did do it’ said Pucetti.

'Who wouldn't?' agreed Vianello, giving tacit agreement to the idea that Dottor Franchi had been the person to make the "mistake".

‘I’ll talk to him if you like’ Vianello volunteered to Brunetti. 'As soon as the water goes down.' Turning to Pucetti, he said, 'Why don't you come along and see what if s like to talk to someone who knows he can't be arrested?'

'Lot of that around,' Pucetti said, absolutely straight-faced.

 

25

 

 

 

He liked it back here in the lab, working, preparing medicines that would help people and restore them to health. He liked the order, the jars and bottles lined up as he wanted them to be, obedient to his will and following the system he knew was best. He liked the feeling of unbuttoning his lab coat and reaching into the watch pocket of his waistcoat for the key to the cabinet. He wore a suit to work every day, put his jacket on a hanger in his office but left the waistcoat on under his lab coat. No sweaters at work: waistcoat and tie. How else would people know that he was a professional, un dottore, if he did not present himself in a serious way?

The others did not. He no longer felt he had the power to make them conform to his standards of propriety regarding dress, though he still would not allow the women to wear skirts shorter than their lab coats, just as he would not permit any of them to wear trainers to work. In the summer, sandals were acceptable, but only for the women. A professional had to dress like one, otherwise where were we?

He ran his fingers down the gold chain until he found the key to the poisons cabinet. He crouched down and unlocked the metal door, comforted by the sound of the key turning in the lock: was there another pharmacy in Venice where they took their responsibility to their clients as seriously as he did? He remembered that he had, some years ago, visited a colleague in his pharmacy and had been invited back to the preparation room. The room was empty as they entered, and he had seen that the door to the poison cabinet was standing open, the key in the lock. It was only by the exercise of great restraint that he had prevented himself from commenting on this, from pointing out the tremendous risks of such negligence. Why, anyone could get in there: a child slipping away from its mother, a person bent on theft, a drug addict. Anyone, and God forbid what might happen then. Wasn't there a movie, or was it in a book, where a woman goes into a pharmacy and eats arsenic that has been left unattended? Some poison; he couldn't remember which. But she was a bad woman, he remembered, so perhaps it was right.

He pulled out the bottle of sulphuric acid.

stood, and placed it carefully on the counter, then slid it slowly back until it touched the wall, safely away from harm. He did the same with other bottles, sliding each carefully back and lining them up so that their labels were to the front and clearly legible. There were small containers: arsenic, nitroglycerine, belladonna, and chloroform. He lined them up, two to the left and two to the right of the acid, turning each carefully so that the skull and crossbones on the labels were visible. The lab door was shut, the way he always left it: the others knew to knock and ask to come in.-He liked that.

The prescription lay on the counter. Signora Basso had been suffering from the same gastric problem for years, and he had filled out this prescription at least eight times, so there was really no need to consult the written prescription, but a true professional did not toy with such things, especially when it was something as serious as this. Yes, the dosage was the same: the hydrochloric acid was always mixed one to two with pepsin, then added to twenty grammes of sugar and the resulting mixture added to two hundred and forty grammes of water. What might differ from prescription to prescription was the number of drops Dottor Prina prescribed for use after each meal, and that depended on the results of the Signora's tests. He was responsible for the reliability and the consistency of the solution. How else could the missing gastric juices be replicated in Signora Basso's stomach?

She, poor thing, had suffered for years, and

Dottor Prina said the condition was common in her family. She was worthy of all of his help and sympathy, poor woman, and not only because she was a fellow parishioner at Santo Stefano and a member of his mother's rosary society. She did her duty and bore her cross in life in silence, not like that other one, Vittorio Priante, little more than a glutton. Fat-faced and flat-footed, all he could talk about, every time he came in, was food and food and food, and then about wine and grappa, and then again about food. Only by lying about his symptoms could he have deceived a doctor into prescribing the acid solution to help him with his digestion, and that made him a liar, as well as a glutton.

But the profession made demands like this on a person who was loyal to it. He could easily have altered the solution, made it stronger or weaker, but that would be to betray his sacred trust. No matter how much Signor Priante might deserve punishment for his excesses and dishonesties, that was in the hands of God, not in his. From him all of his patients would receive the care he had sworn to provide them; he would never allow his personal certainties to affect that, not in any way. To do so would be to be unprofessional, and that was unthinkable. Signor Priante, however, might well have emulated his own moderation at table. His mother had taught him that: indeed, she had taught him moderation in all things. Tonight was Tuesday, so they would have gnocchi that she had made with her own hands and then a grilled slice of chicken breast, and then a pear. No excess, and one glass of wine: white.

No matter how immoral, no matter how lascivious the behaviour of his clients, he would never think of allowing his own ethical standards, or his standards in anything, to affect his professional behaviour. Even someone like Signora Adami's daughter, only fifteen but already twice prescribed medicines against venereal diseases: he would never think of treating her in anything but a manner that remained true to his oath. To do so would be both unprofessional and sinful, and both of those things were anathema to him. But the girl's mother had a right to know the path her daughter was treading and the place where it was likely to lead her. A mother had the duty to protect the purity of her child: he had never doubted that truth. Thus it was his duty to see that Signora Adami knew of the dangers faced by her child: it was his moral duty, never at variance with his professional duty.

Think of someone like Gabetti, bringing disgrace on the entire profession by his greed. How could he do something like that, betray his trust, use the faith placed in him by the entire medical system to set up those false appointments? And how shocking that doctors, medical doctors, had been party to such corruption. The Gazzettino had carried a front page story that morning, even a photo of Gabetti's pharmacy. What would people think of pharmacists if one of them were capable of something as vile as this? Yet the law was to be made mock of once again. The man was too old to be sent to jail, and so it would all be settled quietly. Some paltry fine, perhaps he would be barred from the profession, but he would never be punished, and crimes such as this, indeed, most crimes, merited punishment.

He opened one of the upper cabinets and lifted down the ceramic mixing bowl, the middle-sized one, the one he used for prescriptions of 250 cc. From one of the lower cabinets he took an empty brown medicine bottle and placed it on the counter. He reached into the upper cabinet for plastic gloves, pulled them on, and then reached into the poison cabinet for the bottle of hydrochloric acid. He set it on the counter in front of him, twisted the glass stopper and placed it in a low glass dish kept there especially for this purpose.

Chemistry is not random, he reflected: it followed the laws established for it by God, as God has established laws for all creation. To follow those laws is to partake in a small way in the power God exercises over the world. To add substances in the proper sequence - first this one and then that one - is to follow God's plan, and to give those substances to his patients was to do his duty, fulfilling his part in that vast plan.

The syringe was in the top drawer, wrapped for its single use in a clear plastic package. He tore it open, checked the plunger, pushing and emptying the air from it to see that it moved freely. He inserted the needle into the bottle of acid, slipped his left hand down to steady it, and drew the plunger slowly up, bending down to read the numbers on the side. Carefully, he pulled the tip of the needle out, wiping it gentry against the side of the bottle, then held it over the ceramic dish. Fifteen drops, and no more.

He had reached eleven when he was distracted by a noise behind him. Was it the door? Who would open it without knocking first? He could not remove his eyes from the tip of the syringe, for if he lost count, he would have to clean out the dish and start again, and he didn't want to empty that acid, no matter how minimal the amount, into the city water supply. People might laugh at such caution, but even fifteen drops of hydrochloric acid might do some unknown harm.

The door closed, more quietly than it had opened, as the last drop fell into the dish. He turned and saw one of his patients, though he was really more of a colleague than a patient, wasn't he?

'Ah, Dottor Pedrolli,' he said, unable to disguise his reaction. 'I'm surprised to see you here.' He phrased it that way, carefully, so as not to offend a medical doctor, a man whose education and responsibilities placed him in a rank above his own. He addressed Pedrolli as 'Lei', a vocal sign of the respect he paid to all medical doctors, no matter how many years he might have worked with them. Outside of the pharmacy, perhaps, he would have liked to use 'tu' with doctors and thus demonstrate the closeness of their professional association, but they all continued to address him formally, and so formality had become natural to him over the years. He took it as a sign of their respect for him and his position and had come to take pride in that. He stripped off the plastic gloves and put them in the wastepaper basket before extending his hand to the doctor.

‘I wanted to talk to you, Dottor Franchi,' the other man said in a soft voice after they shook hands. He seemed agitated, Dottor Pedrolli, which was unusual, since he had always seemed such a calm man.

'Who let you in?' Franchi asked, but he was careful to ask the question mildly, in a tone indicative only of curiosity, not of irritation. Only some sort of medical emergency could induce one of his staff to override his instructions about the door.

'Your colleague, Dottor Banfi. I told him I had to see you about a patient.'

'Which one?' the pharmacist asked, genuinely alarmed that one of his patients might be sick or in peril. He began to run through the names of the children he knew were in Dottor Pedrolli's care: perhaps it was one with a longstanding condition, and by guessing who it was, he could save precious seconds in preparing the medicine, could be of greater service to a sick person.

'My son,' Pedrolli said. It made no sense. He had heard, with great astonishment, about the Carabinieri and what had happened at Dottor

Pedrolli's home. Surely, the child could no longer be considered a patient.

'But I thought ...' Franchi began, and then came the thought that the child might have been returned. 'Has he... ?' he began but didn't know how to finish the question.

'No,' said Pedrolli in his typically soft voice. It sounded strange here, in this small room which usually made sounds larger. 'No, he hasn't,' the doctor said and regret flowed across his face. 'And he won't.'

'Then I'm afraid I don't understand,' Franchi said. Suddenly conscious of the syringe in his hand, he placed it on the counter, careful to see that the tip did not touch the surface. He saw that Pedrolli watched as he placed it there, and he saw the doctor's professional glance range over the bottles on the counter. Pedrolli was a fellow professional and would surely appreciate his carefulness, the disciplined orderliness of his workshop, a sure reflection of the disciplined orderliness of his work; indeed, of his entire life.

'I'm preparing a pepsin mixture for a patient,' he explained in answer to no question from Pedrolli, hoping the doctor noticed the way he declined to use the patient's name. With a gesture towards the bottles ranked up against the wall, he said, 'I didn't want to risk taking a bottle out from the back of the cabinet while the others were still there, in front of it, so I took them all out. For safety.' A doctor would appreciate this kind of caution, he was sure.

Pedrolli nodded, seemingly uninterested. 'I'm also a patient here, aren't I?' he surprised the pharmacist by asking.

‘Yes. Of course,' he agreed. He took it as a compliment that a doctor, a fellow professional but nevertheless senior to him, had chosen him as his pharmacist, though it was really the doctor's wife who was his client. And the child, of course, though no longer.

"That's why I came,' Dottor Pedrolli said, again confusing the pharmacist.

‘I still don't understand,' Franchi said. Could the loss have upset the balance of this man's mind? Ah, poor man, but perhaps understandable after so much trouble.

'You have my records, then?' Pedrolli surprised him by asking.

'Of course, Dottore,' he answered. 'I have records for all of my clients’ He liked to think of them as his patients, but he knew he had to refer to them as clients, to show that he knew his proper place in the order of things.

'Could you tell me how it is you come to have them, Dottore?' Pedrolli asked.

'Have them?' Franchi repeated stupidly.

'My medical records’

But he had said only 'records', surely, not 'medical records’ The other man had not understood. ‘I don't mean to correct you, Dottore,' he began, though he did, ‘But I have your records for this pharmacy', he said, choosing his words very carefully. 'It would not be proper for me to have your medical records’ That was true enough, thus to say so was not to lie.

Pedrolli smiled, but it was not a reassuring thing to see. ‘I’m afraid that's not what I heard’

'From whom?' asked an indignant Franchi. Was he, a professional, a man who had lawyers, judges, engineers, and doctors among his patients, was he to be subject to such an accusation?

‘From someone who knows’

Franchi's face grew hot. 'You can't come in here and make that sort of accusation’ Then, remembering the status of the person to whom he spoke, he forced his voice to a more accommodating tone. 'That's completely inappropriate. And unjust.'

Pedrolli took a short step back; strangely, the distance seemed to increase the difference in height between them: the doctor now loomed above the pharmacist. 'If you'd like to talk about inappropriate and unjust accusations, Dottor Franchi,' the other man began in a reasonable voice, one that spoke of patience, 'perhaps we could talk about Romina Salvi.'

Franchi took some time to prepare his face and his voice. 'Romina Salvi? She's a client of mine, but I don't know what you're talking about’

'Who has been taking lithium for six years, I believe,' Pedrolli said with a small smile, the kind that encouraged confidence in a patient.

‘I'd have to check her records to be sure of that,' Franchi said.

'That she's taking lithium or that it's been six years?'

'Either. Both.' 'I see.'

'I don't understand what all this is about, Dottore,' Franchi said fussily. 'And if you don't mind, I'd like to get back to what I was doing. I don't like to keep my clients waiting.'

'She was going to marry Gino Pivetti, one of the lab technicians at the hospital. But somehow his mother learned about the lithium and about her depression, and she told her son. He didn't know: Romina had never told him. She was afraid he would leave her.'

'I don't see how any of this concerns me,' Franchi interrupted. He reached for another pair of plastic gloves, hoping that his desire to return to work would both impress the other man and suggest that there was no purpose in continuing this conversation, and that it was time for him to leave. But Dottor Franchi could hardly ask a medical doctor to leave, could he?

'And that's what did happen: he left. So there will be no children who might disrupt God's plan of perfection by developing manic depression like their mother.'

Politeness kept Franchi from answering that this was a very good thing: God's creatures should emulate His many perfections, not pass on an illness that distorted the divine plan. He uncapped the empty glass bottle and set the cap carefully upside down so as to eliminate any chance of contamination from the counter, unlikely as that was.

'I've been thinking about this for some time.

Dottor Franchi’ Pedrolli said, his voice more animated now. 'Ever since I learned that my medical file was here and began to think about the information that was in it’

Hoping to demonstrate how close he was to losing his patience, Franchi moved the mixing bowl a few centimetres closer to him, as if he were about to begin preparing the solution, and said, ‘I’m afraid none of this makes any sense to me, Dottore’ He reached up and opened one of the cabinets, took down the bottle of pepsin, the suspension solution that formed the next part of the preparation. He unscrewed the cap and placed it in a separate glass dish.

'And Romina Salvi? Does it make any sense to you that someone made a phone call that destroyed her life?' Pedrolli asked.

'Her life has not been destroyed’ Franchi said, now making no attempt to disguise his exasperation at what Pedrolli was saying. He reached for the syringe and moved it carefully out of the way. He said, 'Her engagement has perhaps been broken off: that has hardly destroyed her life’

'Why not?' Pedrolli asked with sudden anger, 'Because it's only emotions? Because no one's in hospital, and no one's dead?'

Franchi had suddenly had enough of this, enough of this talk of emotions and destroyed lives. A life lived in the shadow of the Lord could not be destroyed.

He turned to Pedrolli. 'I told you some time ago, Dottore, that I don't understand what you're talking about. What I do understand is that Signorina Salvi suffers from a disease that could be transmitted to any children she might have, so it is perhaps better that this engagement has been broken off’

'With your help, Dottore?' Pedrolli asked.

'Why do you say that?' Franchi asked with what sounded almost like indignation.

'According to Gino's mother, someone asked her if she weren't concerned for grandchildren. They live in Campo Manin, don't they? So this must be their pharmacy. And where else was she likely to hear such an expression of concern?'

I do not gossip about my clients,' Franchi said in the absolute tones of a man who would neither lie nor gossip.

Pedrolli looked at him for a long time, studying his face, looked for so long that Franchi, to escape his gaze, turned back to his work. He took out another syringe and ripped open the package, the noise an echo of his anger. He tested the syringe, then inserted the tip into the smaller bottle. Slowly, he began to draw up the liquid.

"You wouldn't, would you?' Pedrolli asked, astonished to have so lately realized this. "You wouldn't lie and you wouldn't gossip about a client. You really wouldn't, would you?'

This was barely worthy of comment, but Franchi looked aside long enough to say, not without disgust at the other man's opacity, 'Of course not.'

'But you would make a phone call if you thought a client of yours was doing something you judged immoral, wouldn't you?' Pedrolli spoke slowly, working it out word by word as he spoke. ‘You really would, just as you'd warn Gino's mother. You wouldn't actually say anything, would you? But after they heard of your concern and the reasons for it, they'd know just what was going on, wouldn't they?' He stopped, and contemplated the man in front of him, as if seeing him for the first time in all these years.

Franchi shifted his grip on the syringe and wrapped his fingers round it, as though it were the handle of a knife. He pointed it in the general direction of the other man, all patience exhausted. What was all this about, and why was Dottor Pedrolli so concerned about this woman? Surely she wasn't one of his patients. 'Of course I would’ he finally said, forced to speech by anger. 'Don't you think I have a moral obligation to do that? Don't we all, when we see evil and sin and deceit and we can do something that will prevent it?'

If he had slashed at Pedrolli with the syringe, the other man could have been no more stunned. He raised one hand, the palm towards Franchi, and in a tight voice, asked, 'Only prevent it? And if it's too late to prevent it, do you think if s right to punish it?'

'Of course,' Franchi said, as if explaining a matter of exquisite simplicity. 'Sinners should be punished. Sin must be punished.'

'So long as no one's in the hospital and no one's dead?'

'Exactly,' Franchi said with his usual fussi-ness. 'If it's only emotions, it doesn't matter.'

He turned back to his work. He was calm, competent, a man busy with his professional duties.

Who knows what Pedrolli saw then? A little boy in duck-patterned pyjamas touching his Own nose? And who knows what he heard? A small voice saying Papa? What matters is what he did. He stepped forward and with an angry swing of his arm pushed the pharmacist aside. Franchi, concentrating on the syringe and avoiding injuring himself with it, tangled his left foot with his right and fell to one knee, breathing a sigh of relief at having managed'to keep the syringe away from his body.

He looked up at Pedrolli, but what he saw was the large glass bottle in the doctor's hands moving towards him, and then he saw the liquid splash from it, his own outstretched hand, and then darkness and pain.

 

26

 

 

 

‘Dottore, I'm afraid our conversation this time has to be different from the others’

‘I understand that’

'The first time I spoke to you, I was in the hospital to speak to you as the victim of a crime, and the second time it was to question you about someone I suspected of committing one. But this time I must tell you that you are being questioned in relation to a crime you are accused of committing and that our conversation is being recorded and videotaped. My colleague. Inspector Vianello, is here with me as an observer, and at the end of our conversation, a written record will be presented to you for signature ... Do you understand this, Dottore?... I'm afraid you have to speak, Dottore. For the tape’

‘Oh, I'm sorry. I'm afraid I wasn't paying attention.'

'Would you like me to repeat what I've just said?'

'No, that's not necessary. I understand what you said.'

'Before we begin, Dottore, would you like anything to drink? A glass of water? A coffee?' 'No, thank you.'

If you'd like to smoke, there's an ashtray there.'

Thank you, Cornmissario, but I don't smoke. But of course if either of you would like ...'

'Thank you, Dottbre. May we begin?'

'Of course.'               -

'On me morning of the sixteenth, did you visit the pharmacy of Dottor Mauro Franchi in Campo Sant'Angelo?'

‘Yes, I did.'

'Could you tell me why you went there?'

‘I wanted to speak to Dottor Franchi.'

'Was this for medical reasons, about a patient of yours, perhaps?'

'No. It was a personal matter.'

'Would you ... Excuse me, Dottore?'

‘I suppose in a way, yes, it was about a patient, but one of his, not mine. And while I was there, we also discussed a woman who was a customer of his, but not my patient.'

'Would you tell me who this woman was, Dottore?'

'I'd rather not. She really doesn't have anything to do with any of this.'

I'd prefer to be the judge of that, if I might, Dottore’

‘Yes, I'm sure you would, Comrnissario. But I'm afraid that, in this case, I believe I'm a better judge. So I'd prefer not to tell you her name’

'Would you tell me, then, why you wanted to speak to Dottor Franchi about her?'

'Hmm, I suppose there's no harm in that. I know her fidanzato, well, the man who was once her fidanzato. He's a friend of mine’

'What else can you tell me about her?'

'I was thinking how to put it. They were engaged, these two young people. But the mother of my friend somehow learned that the girl, the woman, had an illness that might be transmitted to their children. They wanted to have children, you see.'

'Excuse me, Dottore, but I'm not sure I understand why you would want to talk to Dottor Franchi about this.'

'Oh, didn't I tell you? Sorry, sorry. You see, they live, the young man and his mother, quite near to Campo Sant'Angelo.'

'And?'

'Don't you see, Commissario? Don't you see what happened?'

‘I’m afraid I can only ask questions, Dottore, not supply answers. I need the information from you, you see.'

'Of course. Then this isn't really a conversation, is it?'

'No, not really, Dottore’

‘It's easy to forget.'

‘Yes, I suppose it is’

'Where were we, Commissario?'

'You were telling me about where your friend and his mother live’

'Yes, of course. Just behind Campo Sant' Angelo. So Dottor Franchi would be their pharmacist. It was Dottor Franchi who told my friend's mother about the disease.'

'Do you have any certain knowledge of that, Dottore?'

'No, I suppose I don't, not certain knowledge. But during my conversation with Dottor Franchi, he said he thought he had a moral right to prevent evil, and help punish it. And that led me to believe that he did tell her, that he let my friend's mother know, and he knew how she would respond’

'Did he tell you that he did it, Dottore?'

'No, not directly. He did not. But any thinking person would understand what he was saying. Or, rather, the significance of what he said’

Is it correct to say that what Dottor Franchi said led you to believe that he revealed this information to the mother of the man this woman was going to marry?'

'Yes’

'What was your reaction to this, Dottore?'

'It angered me. The young woman has been ... has been very unwell as a result of the breakup with her fidanzato.'

'And the young man?'

'Ah, that's a different story.'

'What does that mean?' .

Tie's already engaged to another woman, and his new fidanzata is pregnant’

'Does the other woman, his former fidanzata, know this?'

‘I don't mean to be impolite, Commissario, but do you think it would be possible, in this city, for her not to know?'

'Of course. I understand what you mean. And what was her reaction to this news, do you know, Dottore?'

'She has grown more ... more unwell’ 'Anything else?'

'I think that's enough. I'd prefer not to say anything more’

'Of course, Dottore. You said that you were there to discuss a patient of Dottor Franchi's. Would you tell me who this patient is?'

'Was.'

‘I beg your pardon’

'Was, not is. He is no longer a patient of Dottor Franchi’

Has he moved?' Tn a sense, yes’

‘I’m afraid I don't follow you, Dottore.'

'My son, Commissario. My son Alfredo. He was a patient at Dottor Franchi's pharmacy. But he is no longer a patient there because he no longer lives with me.'

‘I see. Thank you, Dottore. Would you tell me why you went to speak to Dottor Franchi. about your son?'

'I'm afraid the answer is complicated, Commissario.'

Then take your time, if you need to’

‘Yes. Yes. Thank you. I'll try to do that. I could begin by saying I've worked at the Ospedale Civile for nine years. Paediatrics. But why am I telling you that? Of course you know that already. Twice in the past, that is, before this incident with the mother of my friend, I'd heard people say things about Dottor Franchi. That he gave certain information to people that they should not have ... well, that they had no right to have. It was medical information, things Dottor Franchi was said to have learned in the course of his work: about people's illnesses or weaknesses or diseases. At any rate, in some way that was never made clear or explained - and I must admit for the sake of honesty, was never confirmed - this information was said to come to the knowledge of certain other people’

'Are you talking about blackmail, Dottore?'

'Heavens, no. Nothing like that. He could no more commit blackmail, Dottor Franchi, than he could overcharge a client. He's an honest man, you see. And that's what's wrong with him. He's decided what good is, and what sin is, and when someone does something he believes to be sinful, he thinks that they should be punished for it. No, Commissario, I'm not speaking about specific things I know for a fact that he's done: I told you all I know is rumours and suggestions, the way people always say things. It's more that I know the sort of man he is, the way he thinks, and what he believes his obligations are - to maintain public morality. As I told you,

I'd heard this about him twice, but it was always that sort of vague rumour - something someone heard from someone else - that cannot be proven. Or disproven. And so, when I learned that the mother of my friend, who must be a client at the pharmacy, had become aware of medical information, it seemed obvious that the source must have been Dottor Franchi’

'Did you realize this at the time?'

'What time?'

'The time your friend's mother received the information.'

'No, not then. Only later.' 'And when was that?'

'Later. When I started to think about things.'

'But you had no proof? Did your friend's mother say something to you?'

'No, nothing like that I had no proof. Besides, if I might add, without offence, Commissario: proof is more your line of work than mine. I was sure, and I suppose that's the same thing.'

'Ah’

'You don't agree, Commissario?' 'It's not my place here to agree or disagree, Dottore: only to ask you to explain.' ‘I see.'

'You were telling me why you went to speak to Dottor Franchi about your son, Dottore’  

'Yes, I was, wasn't I? It's hard to remember what I've been talking about, I suppose. There are so many things to say and to think about'

‘I’m here to listen.'

'My son, then. There's no sense now in trying to pretend he was my son - my natural son, that is. His mother was an Albanian woman I met in Cosenza’ 'Me, Dottore?'

'Was introduced to, if you will. Someone I know - I'd rather not say who he was - knew that she was pregnant and didn't want to keep the baby, so he introduced me to her and I agreed to her conditions.'

'Financial conditions, Dottore?'

'Of course. That was the only thing she cared about. I don't like having to admit this, Commissario, but all she wanted was the money. I don't think she cared about the baby.'

That's unfortunate’

'Well, she got the money. Ten thousand Euros, and may it do her some good’

That’s a generous attitude, Dottore.'

'What wrong did she do, really? Got born in the wrong country. Came to a richer one. Found herself pregnant and didn't want the baby and found someone who did? In a way, perhaps she deserves credit for having taken the money and not come back later to ask me for more’

'I'm still not sure yet that I see why you went to talk to Dottor Franchi about this.'

‘Please, Commissario. There's no need for you to pretend to be stupid. Ever since I came into this room, eveiything's been about why I went to see Dottor Franchi. In fact, the biggest event in my life, and no doubt in my future, is going to be why I went to see Dottor Franchi.'

‘You say, Dottore, that it's all about why you went to see him. Would you tell me, then, why you did?'

'Because of something you told me.'

'I'm afraid I don't understand.'

'You told me that he had my medical records.'

'No, Dottore, I asked you if the information about any prescription you had made up in the pharmacy would be in your medical records.'

'But you mentioned the inappropriate use of information.'

'Yes, I did. But that was because, at the time, as" I said before, we had reason to believe that Dottor Franchi might be involved in blackmail.'

'That's not worm considering.'

‘I didn't realize you knew him so well.'

'Well enough to say that'

'And so you went to the pharmacy to talk to him about your son?'

'Yes, I did. Have you seen my medical file, Commissario?'

'Yes, I have.'

'May I ask where you saw it?'

‘It was on Dottor Franchi's computer.'

‘I thought so. Then why did you tell me he didn't have it?'

‘I didn't tell you that, Dottore. I told you that when we spoke the first time - that is, the first time you were able to talk to me - I asked if certain information would be in it. I did not tell you that he had it.'

'But he did have it?'

‘Yes, he did. But if you exclude the possibility of blackmail, then he made no use of it'

'Made no use of the file? Surely, you can't be that stupid, Commissario. Of course he made use of it. It was written there, clear enough for any idiot to read: "total sterility." This is a small town, Commissario; furthermore, Dottor Franchi and I are, in a sense, in the same business’

‘I don't follow you here, Dottore.'

‘I mean that he would know the gossip from the hospital. Surely you can follow that, Commissario. He would have heard about my supposed affair when I was at the medical conference, and he'd have been told about the illicit fruit - he'd probably think of it in those terms - of that affair. Other people probably sniggered when I brought Alfredo home, but he wouldn't do that: oh, no, Dottor Franchi would content himself with feeling compassion for the poor weak sinner. But think of his shock when he saw my medical records and realized that I'd been guilty, not of adultery, but of deceiving the state. And surely a man as righteous in the ways of the Lord as Dottor Franchi would think that this was as great a sin.'

‘I think you're mistaken, Dottore’ 'What do you mean, I'm mistaken? Alfredo was not my son: I broke the law by lying on an official government form and saying he was mine; I lied when I said I broke my marriage vows: God alone knows which of these would most offend his twisted sense of morality’ 'I think you're mistaken, Dottore.'

'I'm not mistaken. He's that sort of man. He loves to impose his ideas on other people, loves to see them punished for their sins. Look what he did to Romina: she's a zombie, going in and out of Palazzo Boldu every day, drugged out of her mind. And all because she wanted to marry and have children, and Dottor Franchi decided that manic depressives should not marry and have children. And I suppose-he decided that liars should not have children, either. Vicious, life-hating bastard.'

‘Dottore, please. Nothing's to be gained from this’

'No, nothing is, I suppose. But still, he's a bastard and he got.. ‘

Have you seen him, Dottore?'

'No, of course not. I've been in here, haven't I, since it happened?'

'Of course. Well, I've seen him.'

'Where?'

'In the hospital.'

'And?'

'And he's there. They don't know what they can do: they have to wait until it heals. There's talk of skin grafts. But...'

'But what?'

'But that's not the major problem.' 'What is?'   . 'His eyes’ 'Both?'

'One's gone. The other, well, maybe they'll be able to save it or maybe there's the possibility of a transplant. And then there's his hand.'

*Yes, he tried to cover his face’

'I suppose that's instinctive. It could have been much worse’

'You mean if I hadn't put his face in the sink and turned on the water?'

'Yes.'

It was the only thing I could think of: it was
as instinctive as his trying to protect his face, I suppose. Maybe it’s because I'm a doctor. You just do things: you see an injured person and
you don't think about it: you just react. You remember what, they drilled into you in medical school, and you do it. And I remembered it then,
when I saw him, that the only thing to do is run water over it as soon as you can, and keep the water running.'

'The doctors think it made a difference. The grafts might be easier’

‘I see’

'Dottore, I think I have to explain something to you. You aren't going to believe me. But what I have to tell you is true, no matter how much you don't want to believe it’

'About Franchi?'

'Yes. In a way’

'What way?'

'He didn't call the Carabinieri.' 'How can you say that? How can you know that?'

They got an anonymous call. That's true. But it didn't come from Dottor Franchi.'

‘I don't believe you. The mother didn't want the baby; anyway, she knew where to find me if she wanted more money. She never called me, so there's no reason for her to have called the Carabinieri. Besides, if she had called them, it would only get her into trouble. She knew that. She'd never call them.'

It wasn't the woman.'

'See? I told you.'

"Yes, you did.'

'Well, who was it, then? Who told you?'

'I'm sorry to tell you this, Dottore, but it was your father-in-law. Yes, I know it's a shock, but I know it's true because he told me himself that he did it. I spoke to him some days ago, and he told me. I believe if s true.'

'Giuliano? Oddio, why would he do that? Why would he take our baby away?'

‘Perhaps he didn't think of it as your baby.'

'What do you mean?'

‘Perhaps he found it difficult to think of the baby as yours and your wife's.'

'Commissario, you're not telling me the truth, are you? Or you're not telling me everything you know. If you spoke to him and he told you, then he'd tell you why he did it. He boasts about everything he does, so he'd boast about this, too. Besides, Bianca would never forgive ...'

'I think you've had enough, Dottore.'

'Enough what?'

'Pain.'

'I'm not the only one. Why don't you tell me the last thing, Commissario, so we can end this conversation?'

'Your father-in-law told me that it wasn't his idea.'

'Oh, no. No. You can't expect me to believe that. She loved him. He was her son in everything, everything but his birth. She loved him. She was his mother. He was her baby. She watched him grow ... Well, what do you say, Commissario? Or do you still want me to believe your lie?'

‘I didn't say anything, Dottore: neither lie nor accusation. I didn't suggest it was your wife: you did.'

'Then Franchi didn't.. ‘

'No, Dottore. He may have told your friend's mother, and we know of other cases where he told people about what was in the medical records of people they knew.'

'But did you ask Franchi?'

‘I did, but he didn't answer.'

'Like me, eh?'

'Perhaps a bit. But in his case, I think it's because he can't.' 'Why?'

'The bandages. And they said his mouth was badly burned, as well.'

'My God, my God. What will happen?' 'To whom?' 'To him.'

'They have to wait.' 'And to me?'

'That will depend on your lawyer.' ‘Do I have to have one?' 'It would be best.'

'But do I have to have one?' 'No. You have the right to defend yourself, if you please. But it’s not a wise choice.' 'I haven't made any wise choices, have I?' 'No, you haven't.'

'I think the best thing is to return where I was, then.'

'I don't understand.'

'I couldn't speak when you saw me in the hospital that first time, but then my voice came back. I wasn't pretending, you know, Commissario. It came back, within a few days. But this time I think I don't want to talk because I have nothing more to say.'

I don't understand ... Dottore, I really don't understand. Dottor Pedrolli, are you listening? Dottore, can you hear me? Dottore? All right Vianello, would you open the door, and we'll take the Dottore back to his cell.'