Uniform Justice (19 page)

18

IT WAS NOT
until after the kids had gone to bed that night, when he and Paola sat alone in the living room, she reading
Persuasion
for the hundred and twenty-seventh time, and he contemplating Anna Comnena’s admonition that, ‘Whenever one assumes the role of historian, friendship and enmities have to be forgotten’, that Brunetti returned to his visit to Signora Moro’s apartment, though he did so indirectly. ‘Paola,’ he began. She peered at him over the top of her book, eyes vague and inattentive. ‘What would you do if I asked you for a separation?’

Her eyes had drifted back to the page before he spoke, but they shot back to his face now, and Anne Elliot was left to her own romantic problems. ‘If you
what
?’

‘Asked for a separation.’

Voice level, she inquired, ‘Before I go into the kitchen to get the bread knife, could you tell me if this is a theoretical question?’

‘Absolutely,’ he said, embarrassed by how happy her threat of violence had made him. ‘What would you do?’

She placed the book by her side, face down. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I’ll tell you that as soon as you answer my question. What would you do?’

Her look was discomfiting. ‘Well?’ he prodded.

‘If it were a real separation, I’d throw you out of the house and after you I’d throw everything you own.’

His smile was positively beatific. ‘Everything?’

‘Yes. Everything. Even the things I like.’

‘Would you use one of my shirts to sleep in?’

‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘And if it were a fake separation?’

‘Fake?’

‘Done so that it would look as if we were separated when in reality we weren’t but just needed to look as if we were.’

‘I’d still throw you out, but I’d keep all the things I like.’

‘And the shirt? Would you sleep in it?’

She gave him a long look. ‘Do you want a serious answer or more foolishness?’

‘I think I want a real answer,’ he confessed.

‘Then yes, I’d sleep in your shirt or I’d put it
on
my pillow so that I could have at least the smell of you with me.’

Brunetti believed in the solidity of his marriage with the same faith he invested in the periodic table of the elements, indeed, rather more; nevertheless, occasional reinforcement did no harm. He found himself equally assured of the solidity of the Moros’ marriage, though he had no idea what that meant.

‘Signora Moro,’ he began, ‘is living apart from her husband.’ Paola nodded, acknowledging that he had already told her this. ‘But one of his dress shirts is under the pillow of the bed in which she is sleeping alone.’

Paola looked off to the left, to where an occasional light could still be seen burning in the top-floor window of the apartment opposite. After a long time, she said, ‘Ah.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘“Ah,” indeed.’

‘Why do they have to look as if they’re separated?’

‘So whoever shot her won’t come back and do a better job of it, I’d guess.’

‘Yes, that makes sense.’ She thought about this, then asked, ‘And who could they be?’

‘If I knew that, I’d probably understand everything.’

Automatically, not really thinking about what she said but asserting truth by habit, she said, ‘We never know everything.’

‘Then at least I’d know more than I know now. And I’d probably know who killed the boy.’

‘You won’t let that go, will you?’ she asked entirely without reproof.

‘No.’

‘Probably wise not to,’ she agreed.

‘So you think he was murdered, too?’

‘I always did.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I trust your feelings and because your feeling about it was so strong.’

‘And if I’m wrong?’

‘Then we’re wrong together,’ she said. She picked up her book, slipped a bookmark between the pages, and closed it. Setting it down, she said, ‘I can’t read any more.’

‘Me neither,’ he said, setting Anna Comnena on the table in front of him.

She looked across at him and asked, ‘Is it all right if I don’t wear one of your shirts?’

He laughed out loud and they went to bed.

The first thing he did the next morning was to go see Signorina Elettra, whom he found in her office. Her desk was covered with at least six bouquets of flowers, each wrapped separately in a cone of pastel paper. As he knew she had a standing order for flowers to be delivered on Monday from Biancat, he wondered if he’d got things wrong in thinking today was Tuesday or if he’d somehow invented the events of the previous day.

‘Are those from Biancat?’ he asked.

She ripped two of the packages open and began to place dwarf sunflowers in a green vase.
‘No
, they’re from Rialto.’ She stepped back from the desk, studied the arrangement, then added three more sunflowers.

‘Then it’s really Tuesday?’

She gave him a strange look and answered, ‘Of course.’

‘Don’t the flowers usually arrive on Monday?’

She smiled, lifted the vase, and placed it on the other side of her computer. ‘Yes, they usually do. But the Vice-Questore has begun to cause quite a fuss about office expenses, so, because they’re so much cheaper there, I thought I’d get them from Rialto for a while, until something diverts him.’

‘Did you bring them all yourself?’ he asked, trying to calculate whether they’d fit in her arms.

‘No, I called for a launch when I realized how many of them I’d bought.’

‘A police launch?’

‘Of course. It would be difficult to justify taking a taxi,’ she said, snapping off the stem of a carnation.

‘What with the economy drive and all,’ Brunetti suggested.

‘Exactly.’

Three of the other bouquets ended up together in an enormous ceramic vase, and the last, asters, went into a narrow crystal vase Brunetti could not remember ever having seen. When all three vases were placed to her satisfaction and the papers neatly folded and
placed
in the basket she kept for paper to be recycled, she said, ‘Yes, Commissario?’

‘Have you managed to find out anything about the daughter?’

Signorina Elettra pulled a notebook from the side of her desk and flipped it open. Reading from it, she began, ‘She was taken out of school two years ago, and there’s been no trace of her, at least no bureaucratic trace, since.’

‘Taken out by whom?’

‘Her father, apparently.’

‘How did that happen?’

‘The school records show that her last day of school was the sixteenth of November.’

She looked at him, neither of them having to remind the other that Signora Moro had been shot one week before.

‘And?’ he asked.

‘And that’s all. The forms on file say that the parents had decided to place her in a private school.’

‘Where?’ Brunetti asked.

‘It’s not necessary to mention that, I was told.’

‘And didn’t they ask?’ he demanded, his irritation clear. ‘Don’t they need to know where a child’s going?’

‘The woman I spoke to said that all that’s required is that the parents complete and sign the proper forms, in duplicate,’ Signorina Elettra recited in what Brunetti assumed was the mechanical voice of whoever she had spoken to.

‘And a child’s allowed to disappear and no questions asked?’

‘I was told that the school’s responsibility ends once the parents have filled in the forms and the child’s been taken from the school by one of them.’

‘Just like that?’ he asked.

Signorina Elettra opened her hands in a gesture meant to show her own lack of responsibility. ‘This woman said she wasn’t working there when the girl was withdrawn, so the best she could do was try to explain the regulations to me.’

‘So where is she? A little girl can’t just disappear,’ Brunetti insisted.

‘She could be anywhere, I suppose,’ Signorina Elettra said, then added, ‘But she’s not in Siena.’

Brunetti shot her an inquiring glance.

‘I called the police there, and then I had a look through the records of the school system. There’s no record for her, nor for any child of the Ferros.’

‘The mother’s missing now, too,’ Brunetti said and then went on to tell her of his visit to her apartment and the inferences he had drawn from the presence of the shirt.

Signorina Elettra’s face paled and just as suddenly flushed. ‘His shirt?’ she asked then, before he could answer, repeated the question, ‘His shirt?’

‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered. He started to ask her what she thought of this, but when he took a closer look at her face, he realized there was only one man this could cause her to think of, and he spoke to fill the painful silence that the memory
of
his loss brought into the room. ‘Can you think of a way to trace the child?’ he finally said. When she seemed not to hear him, he said, ‘There’s got to be a way to find her. Some central register of children enrolled in schools, perhaps?’

As if returning from a long distance, Signorina Elettra said in a very soft voice, ‘Perhaps her medical records, or if she’s in the Girl Scouts.’

Before she could suggest anything else, Brunetti cut her off by saying, ‘There are her grandparents. They’ve got to have some idea of where she is.’

‘Do you know where they are?’ Signorina Elettra asked with returning interest.

‘No, but both of the Moros are Venetian, so they should be here in the city.’

‘I’ll see what I can find out,’ was the only remark she permitted herself. Then: ‘By the way, sir, I found out about the girl who was supposedly raped at the Academy.’

‘Yes? How?’

‘Friends from the past,’ was the only explanation she provided. When she saw that she had Brunetti’s attention, Signorina Elettra went on. ‘The girl was the
fidanzata
of one of the students, and he brought her back to his room one night. Somehow, the captain of his class found out about it and went to the room. She started screaming when he came in, and then someone called the police. But there were never any charges and, from what I make of reading the original report, probably no need for any.’

‘I see,’ he said, not bothering to ask her how she had found that report so quickly. ‘
Tanto fumo, poco arrosto
.’ As soon as he spoke he was aware how his dismissal of the story would seem to her, and so hastened to add, ‘But thank God for the girl.’

Sounding not at all convinced by his piety, Signorina Elettra said merely, ‘Indeed,’ and turned back to her computer.

19

BRUNETTI CALLED DOWN
to the officers’ room and asked where Pucetti was, only to be told that he was out on patrol and wouldn’t be back until the following morning. After he hung up, he sat and wondered how long it would take before his appreciation of Pucetti’s intelligence would begin to work to the young man’s disadvantage. Most of the others, even those arch-fools, Alvise and Riverre, were unlikely to turn against him: the uniformed officers were pretty much devoid of jealousy, as least so far as Brunetti could discern. Perhaps Vianello, closer to them in rank and age, would have a better sense of this.

Someone like Scarpa, however, was bound to regard Pucetti with the same suspicion with which he viewed Vianello. Even though
Vianello
had for years kept his own counsel, it had been obvious to Brunetti that the antipathy between the two men had been instant and fierce, on both sides. Possible motives abounded: dislike between a southerner and a northerner, between a single man and one so happily married, between one who delighted in the imposition of his will upon those around him and another who cared only to live peacefully. Brunetti had never been able to make more sense of it than that the men felt a visceral antipathy for one another.

He felt a flash of resentment that his professional life should be so hampered by the complications of personal animosity: why couldn’t those who enforced the law be above such things? He shook his head at his own crazy utopianism: next he would be longing for a philosopher-king. He had only to think of the current leader of government, however, for all hopes of the philosopher-king’s arrival to wither and die.

Further reflection was made impossible by the arrival of Alvise with the latest tabulations of crime statistics, which he placed on Brunetti’s desk, saying that the Vice-Questore needed the finished report by the end of the day and that he wanted figures he could present to the press without embarrassment.

‘What do you think that means, Alvise?’ Brunetti allowed himself to ask.

‘That he solved them all, I’d guess, sir,’ Alvise answered straight-faced. He saluted and left,
leaving
Brunetti with the lingering suspicion that Lear was not the only man who had a wise fool in his following.

He worked through lunch and well into the late afternoon juggling figures and inventing new categories until he had something that would both supply the truth and satisfy Patta. When he finally glanced at his watch, he saw that it was after seven, surely time for him to abandon these concerns and go home. On an impulse, he called Paola and asked her if she felt like going out to dinner. She hesitated not an instant, said only that she’d have to prepare something for the kids and would meet him wherever he chose.

‘Sommariva?’ he asked.

‘Oh my,’ she answered. ‘What brings this on?’

‘I need a treat,’ he said.

‘Maria’s cooking?’ she asked.

‘Your company,’ he answered. ‘I’ll meet you there at eight.’

Almost three hours later, a lobster-filled Brunetti and his champagne-filled consort climbed the stairs to their apartment, his steps slowed by satisfying fullness, hers by the grappa she’d drunk after dinner. Their arms linked, they were looking forward to bed, and then to sleep.

The phone was ringing as he opened the door, and Brunetti for an instant thought of not answering it, of leaving whatever it was until the next morning. Had there been time to see that the children were in their rooms and thus
the
call unrelated to their safety, he would have let it ring on unanswered, but paternity asserted itself, and he answered it on the fourth ring.

‘It’s me, sir,’ Vianello said.

‘What’s wrong?’ came Brunetti’s instinctive response to Vianello’s voice.